GIVEAWAY: Corked, A Memoir by Kathryn Borel

I have an extra copy of
Corked: A Memoir by Kathryn Borel to give away. Travel with the author and her outrageous father through the wine vineyards of southern France.

"Corked is a fevered road trip that takes us deep into the heat of family mystery, emotional thirst, and, in luscious counterpoint, the vineyards of southern France. Kathryn Borel is a caustically witty companion, who writes with unsentimental, unsparing insight bout the distant, inscrutable father traveling beside her." - Leanne Shapton, author of Was She Pretty?

"A funny, quirky, bitersweet memoir full of wry wisdom on the subjects of wine, grief, memory, France, and family." - Jay McInerney, author of A Hedonist in the Cellar.

To enter the giveaway for this hardcover book, published 2009 by the Hachette Book Group:  1) leave a comment telling me briefly about a favorite wine, and leave your email address. 2) For an extra point, become a follower or let me know if you already follow.

U.S. addresses only, and no P.O. boxes, please. The giveaway contest runs through March 4; the winner will be notified by email and must reply by March 6. A new winner will be chosen after then.

Please enter, and good luck!

UPDATE: The winner chosen by Randomizer is Rose City Reader. Congrats!
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100-Word Writing Challenge: Fortune

The 100-Word Challenge is a weekly writing prompt exercise hosted by Verbal Verbosity; the challenge is to  write exactly 100 words on the given topic. This week's challenge word and my topic is: Fortune

My submission:

Ada looked quizzically at the woman behind the table. She had expected an old woman holding a crystal ball, but this fortune teller was no more than 40 years old.

"Show me your left hand," the woman whispered.

"I don't want to be told I'll meet a tall, dark, handsome man," Ada volunteered wryly.

The woman studied Ada's palm in the half light of the tent.

"You will have a long life," she said. Ada smiled.

"You will have two husbands," she added.

Ada withdrew her hand, surprised.

"Will either of them be tall, dark and handsome?" she asked breathlessly.

See other entries here. New word prompts given every Saturday.

Wordless Wednesday: Winter White

My backyard has a bluish-grey look from the overcast sky.

More WW entries:

Interview with Kristin Bair O'Keeffe, author

Welcome, Kristin, and thanks for visiting!

Q: Can you tell us what inspired you to write your debut novel, Thirsty? (link to review)

Kristin: Two things: my family history with domestic violence and my family connection to the steel industry. I grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, and my maternal grandparents lived just down the road a bit in Clairton, one of Pittsburgh’s most dynamic steel communities. In the 1960s and 1970s, I spent a lot of time at their house with the smokestacks of the mills bearing down and barges hauling steel along the Monongahela River. My grandfather and great uncles worked in the steel mills so it was a big part of our family story. When the steel industry collapsed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so did Pittsburgh’s steel communities. At that point, the storyteller in me jumped up and said, “Ooohh, there’s something to be told here.”

Before I wrote fiction, I wrote poetry. As an undergraduate at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, I wrote and published “Crumbling Steeples,” a poem about how the crash of Pittsburgh’s steel industry affected its steel communities (and more specifically, my grandfather). After I wrote it, I thought I was done writing about Pittsburgh and steel. Obviously I was wrong; the poem was just the beginning.

Q: When did you write the book, and how much research went into it?

Kristin: I wrote the first full draft of Thirsty during graduate school at Columbia College Chicago in the 1990s, and although I am definitely not a historian or a steel-making specialist, it was very important that I get the details right (fingers crossed). I did a heck of a lot of research at the Harold Washington Library Center on State Street in downtown Chicago.

Q: Which writers have influenced you the most?

Kristin: Here’s a sampling, though there are many more:

• for language, rhythm, and soul: Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez
• for writing about women’s lives in significant ways: Alice Walker and Toni Morrison
• for thinking like me: Dr. Seuss and Amy Krouse Rosenthal
• for keeping me centered: Thich Nhat Han and Pema Chodron• for writing inspiration: Natalie Goldberg and Anne Lamott

Q: Are you planning another book or any other work?

Kristin: Absolutely. I’ve got two big projects on my plate right now:

a. a memoir about falling in love with an Irishman, marrying him (um, rather quickly), moving to China, and becoming a mom.

b. a second novel...which is wildly different than Thirsty

Q: Can you tell us about your work in Shanghai?

Kristin: You know, living in China is this wonderful, kooky, frustrating, thrilling, eye-opening experience. When I moved here in 2006, I didn’t know much about Chinese culture and I didn’t speak a word of Mandarin. For a lot of people, that kind of change is overwhelming. For me, it was inspiring. I love being nudged (pushed/shoved) out of my comfort zone, plunked down into a culture about which I know little or nothing, and forced to reexamine who I am and how I define myself in the world.

The good news after almost four years in China?

I’ve got enough material to write about for a lifetime.

Q: Is there anything else you would like readers to know?

Kristin: I love to hear about writers’ quirks. My own? As a writer, I’m obsessed with the rhythm and sound of every single word in every single sentence I put on a page. I read everything out loud (including this guest blog post)…over and over again; if I hear a clunker word, I replace it, and then I read the entire piece out loud again.

Of course, if you’re thinking I only do this in the privacy of my own office, you’re dead wrong. I read my work out loud in coffee shops, book stores, airports…pretty much any place they’ll allow me to plop down with my computer and work.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and writing tips with us, Kristin. Good luck with your memoir and your next novel!

Bio
Kristin Bair O’Keeffe’s debut novel Thirsty (Swallow Press, 2009) tells the story of one woman’s unusual journey through an abusive marriage, set against the backdrop of a Pittsburgh steel community at the turn of the twentieth century. Her work has been published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Poets & Writers Magazine, San Diego Family Magazine, The Baltimore Review, The Gettysburg Review, and many other publications. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago and has been teaching writing for almost fifteen years. Kristin lives in Shanghai, China, with her husband and daughter.

 If you’d like to learn more, visit http://www.thirstythenovel.com/ and her blog “My Beautiful, Far-Flung Life” at http://www.kristinbairokeeffeblog.com/.You can also follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kbairokeeffe and friend her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Kristin.Bair.OKeeffe.

Book Review: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Water for Elephants is the story of a young man who runs off to join the circus during the Great Depression, leaving his troubles behind plus an unfinished veterinary degree from an Ivy League university. His vet training lands him a permanent job with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, but life in the circus is not all the fun it seems.

There is animal cruelty, unscrupulous practices by the owner and manager of the circus, and unexplained disappearances of unneeded circus workers every so often. Jacob falls in love with an equestrian performer, Marlena, who is married to August, a circus boss. When August repeatedly beats the new elephant bull, Rosie. for not performing, Jacob and Marlena band together to protect the elephant and each other from the unscrupulous practices of August and the circus owner, Al.

Comments: I listened to the book on audio, expertly and entertainingly read by David Ledoux and John Randolph Jones, who were the voices of Jacob at age 90 and Jacob in his early 20s, remembering and telling the story.

Jacob at age 90 is delightful, telling us with humor his unhappiness with being confined to the nursing home where his family has placed him. Jacob at age 20 plus recounts his three and a half months with the Benzini Brothers Circus, his work with the animals, his love for Marlena, and how they survive the brutality of their bosses and environment.

I don't know if reading the book would have been as enjoyable as listening to the audio. I might have skipped over Jacob's complaints about his nursing home food and the other residents and missed a lot. Listening to the book being read was not at all boring but made Jacob endearing and made what he does at the end of his story entirely plausible.

Definitely a 5 star novel.
Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge, Support your Local Library Challenge

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The Sunday Salon: Change in Plans

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Two reasons to celebrate today: Valentine's Day and the start of the Lunar New Year of the Whie Tiger.

I had planned to have eye surgery last  Thursday and borrowed  about 4 audio books to listen to while recovering. Change of plans! My eye doc had to be sent to the hospital and will be fine, but postponed my surgery for a month!

Nevertheless, I started the audio book, Mrs Pollifax and the Lion Killer, am almost through with Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, which I highly recommend as a very interesting and entertaining story of life in the circus during the Depression era, told by two men representing the main character as a 90 year old man and as a young man.

The other audio books I got are R is for Richochet by Sue Grafton, and A Fine Place for Death, a mystery by British writer, Ann Granger.

I also went to the library and picked up another book by Christopher G. Moore, The Risk of Infidelity Index. Moore writes detective fiction set in Bangkok. I'm enjoying this one too. Also had fun doing a 100-Word Writing Challenge hosted by Verbal Verbosity, which happens every week.

Can't believe I also squeezed in 3 reviews and an almost-review- one crime fiction, two general fiction, and one non-fiction:  Paying Back Jack by Christopher G. Moore; Thirsty: A Novel by Kristin Bair O'Keefe, I Ching: A New Interpretation for Modern Times, and The Pig and I by Rachel Toor.

Overall, I did more on the blog that I had planned! How about you?

The Pig and I by Rachel Toor: Must Reads # 1

I've always wondered what it would be like to have a pot- bellied pig for a pet. I've read they are as smart as a 3-year-old!

My Must Reads is a book I found online and decided was too entertaining to pass up.

The Pig and I: Why It's So Easy to Love an Animal and So Hard to Live with a Man
by Rachel Toor

The cover and title caught my attention, and then the description from Goodreads:

Funny, heartfelt, and irreverent, The Pig and I follows the hilly course of author Rachel Toor's romantic life as she falls in love with a series of pets and in and out of love with an equally eclectic string of men, many of whom bear a striking resemblance to the animals, both in looks and temperament.


From Prudence, a sweet white lab mouse who hates Rachel’s sweet, mousy actor-boyfriend Charlie, to Emma the pig, a fifty-pound force of nature that Rachel coparents with her ex-boyfriend Jonathan, we accompany Rachel as she learns how to bring into her human relationships the same kind of acceptance she so easily extends to her pets. Anyone who knows the comfort of coming home after a disastrous date or day at the office to a wagging tail or a ready purr will find The Pig and I irresistible.

The Pig and I: Why It's So Easy to Love an Animal and So Hard to Live with a Man. You can click on the title to sneak a peek through Amazon's "click to look inside" feature.

What Must Reads  have you found recently? Must Reads details a book that you can't resist, one you definitelly have to read.

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