Magic Indeed!

My Man, the children, and I traveled for about 8 hours on the day after Christmas. I had been secretly looking forward to the long drive because of a book I'd been sent to read for review for BlogHer Book Club. I had stolen moments throughout the month of December between baking cookies and wrapping packages to dive eagerly into this book which is entitled The Magic Room. I was eager to have uninterrupted car time in which to finish this well written book.

The book, in the words of its author Jeffrey Zaslow is, "not exactly about weddings, and not exactly about a bridal shop, and not exactly about bridal gowns, its a book about the love we all share with our daughters."

The Magic Room tells the true story of Becker's Bridal Shop, located in the very small town of Fowler, Michigan. Becker's has been owned by three generations of Becker women each operating the store in her own fashion and in her own strengths.

The bridal shop's owners are not the entire story however, as Mr. Zaslow expertly weaves the stories of six brides-to-be as they journey toward the altar with the story of the bridal shop and it's cast of relatable characters. He says that he started each bride's story as she entered the Magic Room and then worked backwards out into her life to tell her story.

Zaslow lays out his purpose for writing this book early in the pages of the introduction saying,

...I came here not just to write about wedding gowns and what they represent. I also wanted to understand the women wearing them, their fears and yearnings. 

I resolved to pay less attention to the brides I met whose motives seemed somewhat frivolous, the one more focused on their dresses than their upcoming marriages. Instead, I wanted to find brides and their families whose paths were not necessarily easy, but who have given great thought to the love that guides and connects them.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and may or may not have been a teensy bit tearful at the end. The book is not at all a sad one, but one of hope and of love. It was also full of interesting statistics about the state of marriage in the world at one point relating that "The annual number of weddings in America, which peaked in 1984 at 2.48 million, has declined every year since then." Also, "For women, the average age of first marriage has risen to twenty-six years old from twenty-one in 1970. For men, it has risen to twenty-eight from twenty-three."

I also loved, loved, loved the way the author handled each bride's story with a special dose of respect and tenderness toward the bride and her family, which he gained perhaps from his own experiences as the father of three daughters. Especially touching was the way Zaslow treated the story Shelley, the current owner of Becker's and her family.

I feel as if I could travel to Fowler, Michigan, enter Becker's Bridal and its Magic Room (the room where brides-to-be are invited to enter when they feel they've found THE DRESS and gaze at themselves in the flattering lighting in a vast array of mirrors) and feel like I knew well, its inhabitants.

The Magic Room is one of those books that will entertain, inform, and enlighten while at the same time leave a mark on your heart. It caused me to care about the brides, their families, and about the Becker's Bridal family in a way that I'd not expected as I opened the pages to begin my journey into The Magic Room. If you'd like to see a few pictures of this beautiful bridal shop, click here to go to Becker's Bridal website.

You may be familiar with author, Jeffrey Zaslow's name as the coauthor of the world wide #1 best selling book, The Last Lecture written with Randy Pausch. He is also the author of The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship, which I plan to read soon!

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book in partial exchange for review for BlogHer. My opinions, however, are entirely my own...as usual!

Join me later this week at BlogHer for more discussions about this fabulous book!

Lake of Dreams...Potential Unmet

When I participated in Christmas and Easter plays as a child, I remember the director  continually stressing the importance of the beginning song and the finale. She would say, "We've got to get those two parts down really well because the audience always remembers the first thing they see and the last thing they see." She was right. 

The author of The Lake of Dreams must have had similar training. The prologue and the ending of the book were good. I was captured by the cliffhanger at the end of the prologue as well as the could-be-theme revolving around the appearance Haley's Comet. Similarly, the ending was so neat and tidy that I finished the book almost forgetting how tedious the 300 pages between the “opening act” and the "finale" had been.

The book opens in 1911 on the night Haley's comet is to appear in the town of Lake of Dreams. The narrative discusses the fear of the general populace that the comet would poison the air outside. Rose, the central character of the novel is introduced as she, unafraid of the comet’s potential danger, sneaks out of her house to accompany her brother as he sets off on evening adventure that would ultimately change the course of her life. 

Chapter one brings the reader to present day Japan as the central figure in the modern story is introduced. Lucy Jarrett, the great, great-niece of Rose, is a woman discontented with her life and maybe with her long term love interest. She wavers into and out of a decision to return to her hometown Lake of Dreams to look in on her mother who has broken her arm in a car accident. Lucy eventually decides to return home where she happens to pick a lock in her bedroom and find papers written by her ancestor Rose.

The entire balance of the novel is the story of Lucy’s obsession with her search for information about Rose and about the stained glass windows that become involved in the mystery. While the simplicity of the plot would seem to provide an excellent framework for a tightly woven tale paralleling the lives of two women each on their search for their life’s meaning, such was not the case.

The story is peppered with unnecessary conversations between characters, unnecessary side-trails that lead nowhere, and characters that are given much space to develop in the story and are then left dangling in the midst of nowhere until the end of the tale where they are grafted back in for a grand finish.

I really wanted to like this book, unfortunately, after the prologue, I had to read nearly 300 pages before the story had any appeal to me at all. The storyline had such interesting potential as did the possibility of the development of the many available themes in the book but it simply did not live up to my expectations.

There were a few positive elements in The Lake of Dreams--I learned bits and pieces of the history of the Women's Suffrage Movement in the US, and I enjoyed the description of the stained glass windows throughout which depicted pivotal moments in the lives women in the Bible. I appreciated the tightly wrapped, if sentimental, ending as well, however, on the whole it is not a book I can recommend as one that readers should invest the time it takes to read the 400 pages.


If you'd like to learn a bit more about this book and its author, click here to go to the BlogHer Bookclub page where The Lake of Dreams is featured.

{This was a paid book review for BlogHer Book Club, my opinions, however, are entirely my own!}

Writing about Rules...(& a Molly Pic)

Remember last month when I read 5 books while on vacation and I only was able to tell you about 4 of them (click here if you don't remember and are curious about the other books...) ?

I read that 5th book as a member of BlogHer Book Club and my review has posted there today!! Yea! The book that I read is called Rules of Civility by Amor Towels whose writing really swept me off my feet!!

Please (pretty please?) click on over to BlogHer for a just a second and take a look at Rules of Civility and why I'm such a fan...Thanks a bunch!!

A really whole bunch... (click here).

(Picture included for my "non-bookish" Mom, who frequently skips scrolls quickly through my book reviews wishing instead to see pictures of her grandchildren...the nerve!)

"The things I want to know are in books; 

my best friend is a man who'll get me a book I haven't read." 

~Abraham Lincoln

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Two weeks of vacation from his work usually means that my Man can be found packing the family van and setting off into the sunset of a beach amidst the boisterous clamor of his family. This year, like another three years earlier, found the Wrights embarking on a "stay-cation".

A "stay-cation" is time away from one's daily existence without time away from one's dwelling place. Tricky. Three years ago our "stay-cation" was necessitated by the impending arrival of Molly into our family. This year our "stay-cation" was a result of a home in need of some major TLC and a football season that would not wait on our family's return from a distant locale.

The first week of our time off together involved jetting around the area shopping a bit here and there, swimming a bit here and there, driving a bit here and there, and eating out every evening here and there! I was Queen of the Passenger's Seat and my subjects were all lovely little travelers (most of the time). As my Man drove hither and yon, I read. As my Man played with children in pools across the land, I read some more. When my Man drifted off to sleep exhausted from all of that driving and swimming, I turned on a night light and continued to read.

The second week of "stay-cation" involved work--housework, and lots of it. As my Man made four thousand trips to Lowe's, operated a power washer, and shoveled in shrubbery beds and build landscaping edges...

I baked a little, 

...did laundry a lot, and read still more.

Were I to imagine this blog post as the annual back to school assignment, my essay would be a simple one.

"This year on my summer vacation I read five books."

Two of the books, I'd had a bit of a head start on while the other three were "begun & done" in two weeks! It usually takes me that long to read the directions on a child's board game, but I used every possible second available to stick my nose into a book or into my Nook.

Here's what I read...

Crunch Time by Diane Mott Davidson

(Click on Title or Author for link)

This is the 16th installment of the Goldy Bear culinary mystery series. I have read them all. This one may not be the strongest of the series, but it was a fun read all the same especially with the added feature of recipes in the back of the book! My favorite way to consume these books is by audio. They are narrated by the very most talented voice in the audiobook world, Barbara Rosenblat who brings the book to life. 

(Ms. Rosenblat also narrates another of my favorite series featuring Amelia Peabody a Victorian-era archaeologist in Egypt click here for Amazon link to the first book. The series, by Elizabeth Peters should be read in order if possible.) My local library is loaded with audio books and I take full advantage of their convenience.   I often listen to them while cooking or folding laundry to make the job more fun and I did just that with this one. I'd listen for a bit, then I'd open the book and read for a while when things got quiet. 

Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches

 by Rachel Jankovic

(Mother of five kiddos under six!)

Remember this spaghetti face book I talked about a while ago - here? I loved every single page of it. It is as good as a parenting book can get. I can't say enough about this book. The only thing that gave me pause was that the author's picture on the back only served to emphasize how much younger she is than I.

How'd she get so wise so fast? Page after page brought forth blessing and lesson alike. On a few pages I laughed aloud even as my toes were bruising. It really is THAT good. Tell every young (and less young) mommy you know about this book!

The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert

I read this quirky book on my Nook on the recommendation of one of my favorite readers Nancy Pearl, who is probably the most famous librarian you don't know about.  She even has her own action figure! No kidding. 

Author of many "books about books" Mrs. Pearl is my go to gal when I'm in need of an interesting read. The Coffins of Little Hope has, as it's storyteller, 83 year-old Essie Myles who is the obituary writer for her family's hometown newspaper. Essie opens the book like this...

I still use a manual typewriter (a 1953 Underwood portable, in a robin’s egg blue) because the soft pip-pip-pip of the typing of keys on a computer keyboard doesn’t quite fit with my sense of what writing sounds like. I need the hard metal clack, and I need those keys to sometimes catch so I can reach in and untangle them, turning my fingertips inky. Without slapping the return or turning the cylinder to release the paper with a sharp whip, without all that minor havoc, I feel I’ve paid no respect to the dead. What good is an obituary if it can be written so peaceably, so undisturbingly, in the dark of night?

To read Nancy Pearl's explanation of this quirky book which touts one of the most original plots I've read lately, click here...

Next up...

Don't you love to "meet" a new author through an excellent book? While reading Bel Canto I experienced that very happiness. Ann Patchett is the author of many books, all very different themes and plots, characters and settings, and all very highly reviewed. None of her books is more highly lauded than this one, winner of the Orange Prize for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction. 

This was another of the books that I simultaneously read on my Nook and listened to via audiobook from the library. I'm not sure which I was more taken with, the listening or the reading. Both were grand experiences with this wonderful, wonderful story. Here's what it's about.

In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. His hosts hope that Mr. Hosokawa can be persuaded to build a factory in their Third World backwater. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.

This story explores the lives of the captors and captives throughout the long period of captivity which would last for over four months. By the end of the novel, I'd fallen in love with many of the captives and more than one of the captors all of whose lives are explored deeply and thoughtfully by the skilled Patchett.

Finally, I read...

    ...well, I can't exactly tell you yet what the fifth book was yet, but the review will be posted soon on a blog site called BlogHer.com where I was invited to read and review the title in question.  I'll let you know when my review goes "live." Until then...I think there's plenty of material above to work with!!

"A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading it."  ~William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958

More vacation adventures & recipes to come...stay tuned! 

Never Judge a Book by Its Cover!

 I'm reading a little book right now that my Man gave to me a few weeks ago called Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches. I didn't think I'd like the book AT ALL and even huffed a bit when he handed it to me. Even as he cited all of the good reviews the book had been receiving, I was internally rolling my eyes and wondering why he'd ordered it for ME.

The cover was troubling at best, it has a picture of a very young child who has spilled spaghetti all over himself (including on his eyelid!) and all over the rest of the book's lovely white cover for goodness sake!! It just made me want to run for a dishrag.  I tossed it on the shelf, confident that I had mastered "the little years" at this point in my life.

It wasn't until a week or so later that I grabbed "Loving the Little Years" and headed outside to read while the kids played.

The first sentence grabbed me:

"If there is anything I have learned in the course of my fast and furious mothering journey, it is that there is only one thing in my entire life that must be organized." 

Alrighty then, one thing, I can handle organizing ONE THING! Maybe this gal could teach me something, or at least that ONE THING!

I read on to learn that the author, Rachel Jankovic, is a mother to five kids under the age of six! OK, she must really need to have more organized than just that one thing right? I continued reading the first chapter and discovered that the one thing that the author needed to have  organized was her ATTITUDE. 

"The kids can be running like a bunch of hooligans through a house that appears to be at the bottom of a toaster, and yet, if organization and order can still be found in my attitude, we are doing well. But if my attitude falters, even in the midst of external order, so does everything else."

All I could think of was OUCH! I had been in an internal season of self-imposed "woe-is-me" and my attitude had defiantly suffered, creating a mountain out of EVERY conceivable mole hill.

Greeting my Man at the door each day as he arrived home with tales of bad listening, harsh heartedness, mental clutter and defeat. I was NOT tattling on the children, I was relating to him the internal condition of my heart! Oh how he must have loved coming home to me!

I dared to read further and finish the mere two page chapter that had snapped my pity-partying self to attention. The author finished her introductory chapter with these words,

"I didn't write this book because mothering little ones is easy for me. I wrote it because it isn't. I know that this is a hard job, because I am right here in the middle of it. I know you need encouragement every day, because I do too."

I continue to pick up this book that I'd earlier judged as "beneath me and my level of experience" each morning to read a word of encouragement and to get my game-face on for the day. 

The second short chapter begins with the most intriguing sentences: 

"I remember a time when I used to be much godlier. It was sometime in junior high and my room was clean..." 

The third chapter, "Picky Chickens" is fabulous and the fourth chapter, my favorite thus far, is called "The Fruit of the Spirit Speed Quiz" which I'm pretty sure I failed, but am excited to keep trying! 

Each day I enjoy a small chapter and a large dose of wisdom from this fellow "mom-in-the-trenches" who communicates with a winsome voice and with a realistic outlook the important calling of motherhood. 

My only wish is that the publishers would have chosen not to aim the book at such a narrow audience, mothers of very young children, with the book's title. I've been studying this art of mothering for over a decade, and I'm confident that mothers of preschoolers, school-aged children, and even pre-teenaged children and beyond will find great benefit in these pages!

Rachel Jankovic recently wrote an article entitled "Motherhood Is a Calling (And Where Your Children Rank)" which is every bit as wonderful as the content of her book. (Click here, or on the title of the article above to go to the article's website. To read more about the book, click anywhere you see the book's title to take you to the Amazon.com link for Loving the Little Years)

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/motherhood-is-a-calling-and-where-your-children-rank

What Does A Good Book Look Like?

Like this...

The Book:

The Sea of Monsters

From the Series: 

Percy Jackson & the Olympians (Book #2)

Another super series Cole read last year...

Peter and the Starcatchers

Peter and the Shadow Thieves

Peter and the Secret of Rundoon

Peter and the Sword of Mercy

Here's a blurb from the publisher:

Follow the adventures of Peter, Molly, Tinker Bell, and the Lost Boys in all three Peter Pan prequels: Peter and the Starcatchers, Peter and the Shadow Thieves, and Peter and the Secret of Rundoon. Don't even think of starting this trilogy unless you're sitting in a comfortable chair and have lots of time. These fast-paced, impossible-to-put-down adventures are action-packed, touching, and tons of fun!

Cole adored this series and recommends it to all who ask!  He's still waiting on me to finish the first one!

I'm waiting on him to spend his next book allowance on this title...

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

...and he's waiting on me to break down and buy it, knowing I can't hold out much longer.  It's quite an original book. It is 525 pages in length of which 284 are beautifully illustrated by the author's pencil drawings.  The plot relies both on the pages filled with text as well as those with illustration.  A perfect choice for a reluctant reader as pages will turn faster than a book filled with pure words.  A great choice too for the avid reader who will enjoy the novelty of the story being told through the rich illustrations in addition to the written word. (To find out more about The Invention of Hugo Cabret click here)

Happy Reading!

Books to Go

A few weeks ago, my Man took me with him as he attended the Basics Conference near Cleveland, Ohio.  I had been looking forward to this trip for some months and thought that the date would never arrive.  
As our time to travel together crept up on us, I began ordering books from the library and picking up a book or two here and there so that I would be ready to nestle down under the covers of a quiet hotel bed full of fluffy hotel pillows and READ!
Our hotel room was perfect, bright and inviting. Here's a tour...

 I had plenty of reading material to keep me entertained while my Man was at the conference...

Looks like a huge selection for just a few days away, however, one never knows in what kind of reading "mood" she will find herself!


Our hotel was a few short miles from a large bookstore, so after dropping my Man at his conference the first day, I followed the GPS to Borders Books.  I bought a book that was recently recommended to me and read little else.  Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling is a novel about the search for art stolen by the Nazis at the end of the Second World War.  It was a so-so read, but one that once started I felt compelled to finish.

I also added many new titles to my stack while traveling.  I found these at a used bookstore:

The Book Thief

Little Bee

Mollie Peer

Away: A Novel

I found more than a few treasures at the bookstore in the church where the Basics Conference took place:

Family Worship (Family Guidance series) by Joel Beeke
God's Alphabet for Life: Devotions for Young Children also by Joel Beeke

Good Manners for Today's Kids by Emilie Barnes

and two from my favorite "series"...the Journibles. Journibles are much like the blank journals you find all over the place, blank inside with lined pages.  These journals however, have a different purpose.  The series is called The 17:18 Series, named for Deuteronomy 17:18 in which Moses gives instructions to the future kings of Israel.  

"The king is commanded to not simply acquire a copy of the law from the 'scroll publishing house,' but to hand-write his own copy of the law....Thirty-four hundred years later, educators are 'discovering' that students that physically write out their notes by hand have a much greater retention rate than simply hearing or visually reading the information.  Apparently, God knew this to be true of the kings of Israel also.  From such understanding came the conception of this series of books."

~Rob Wynalda, Journible Designer

My Man gave me my first Journible for Christmas, the book of John, and I've been enjoying a much richer time with the Word ever since.  It was with great delight that I rounded the corner at Books on the Park to find an entire shelf-full of these wonderful study tools.  I can now claim three.  John, Romans, and Galatians~2 Thessalonians.  After a few weeks of copying Romans, I have gained, among other things, a new appreciation for the beauty of the language used in that ancient book.  To find out more about Journibles, click on the word Journible or on the link: www.heritagebooks.org  to view everything that this excellent publisher has to offer.

I shall forever refer to this little getaway as "My Book Retreat."  My time away to experience some rest and relaxation turned in to an experience of reading, relaxing and reloading (my bookshelf, that is).

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience:  this is the ideal life. 

 ~Mark Twain