Waiting on Wednesday: The Same Sweet Girls' Guide to Life by Cassandra King

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine,  that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

The Same Sweet Girls' Guide to Life

The Same Sweet Girls' Guide to Life: Advice from a Southern Belle by Cassandra King is a short and sweet lecture of advice to young women, to be published May 1, 2014 by Maiden Lane Press; 97 pages

Book description: This lecture was delivered by the author to a graduating class in May 2013 at her alma mater, Montevallo College in Alabama. 

The Same Sweet Girl’s Guide to Life offers inspiration and solid advice to new graduates that can sustain them through life’s ups and downs.  This small book offers  hard-earned wisdom for young and old.

Her first pearl of wisdom: sincerity is an important virtue, and once you learn to fake it, you are well on your way to success! Dare to laugh at yourself.  Find kindred spirits and keep them close to you; expand your circle of friends. Know the true value of time. She also advises that we try to find words to express love and gratitude but to keep in mind that it is our actions that reveal our feelings more than our words.

And as an addition to this lecture, King adds a new afterword on the value of becoming a lifelong reader. (goodreads)

Sounds like a good book for new college graduates! The title of this lecture refers to her novel The Same Sweet Girls, a book about lifelong friends, published in 2012.

What new book are you waiting on?

Book Review: Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates

Title: Black Chalk: A Novel by Christopher J. Yates
Publisher: Random House UK; First Edition edition (April 1, 2014)

Something someone said all those years ago has stuck in my mind. Although I can't actually remember who said it....
Of course winning is everything. Why else do you think we call ourselves the human race? (p. 14)

My comments: 
Oxbridge students will definitely love this book, as will college or university students who are competitive and love mind games. For this is what it is - a novel about Oxford students joining a club called Gaming, and creating a psychological game that tested wits and mental endurance. This was not meant to be a physical challenge, but it turned out to involve the physical further in the game.

I was a little out of my league with this book - I have long left the university as either a student or teacher, and my mind games are limited to word games or backgammon. But those readers still involved in gaming, virtual or otherwise, will find the book's setting and characters intriguing and the plot unusual and compelling. Do try it, if you like games and uncertain outcomes, even though you may not be a player.

About the book: "One game. Six students. Five survivors.
It was only ever meant to be a game.
A game of consequences, of silly forfeits, childish dares. A game to be played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University. But then the game changed: the stakes grew higher and the dares more personal, more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results.
Now, fourteen years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round." (publisher)

Christopher J. Yates studied law at Wadham College, Oxford from 1990-93 and initially pursued a career in law before he began working in puzzles, representing the UK at the World Puzzle Championships. Since then he has worked as a freelance journalist, sub-editor and puzzles editor/compiler. In 2007 he moved to New York City with his wife, and currently lives in the East Village.
Please visit his website, christopherjyates.com.

Thanks to TLC Book Tour and the publisher for a review copy of this book. Visit TLC for the tour schedule and other reviews.


INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY: 

To enter, comment here or email me at harvee44@yahoo.com with the heading: BLACK CHALK GIVEAWAY. The contest is open worldwide as the publisher in the UK is willing to send the books anywhere. The contest ends April 19. Winner will be notified by email on April 20 to send a mailing address, and will have two days to respond before another winner is chosen. Good luck!

UPDATE: Congrats to Brian Joseph, the winner of this giveaway!

Sunday Salon: Reading and Gardening Plans

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Also visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer; It's Monday: What Are You Reading? at Book Journey. Also visit Mailbox Monday, hosted by Vicki, Leslie, and Serena.

We are considering putting in a raised garden bed for veggies, a bed that will have to be meshed in with wire to keep out the bunnies. I have already bought seeds for peppers, string beans, squash, and basil genovese, to plant as late as early May. The temps will dip below freezing this coming week! A customer at the store advised me to forego wood, which deteriorates over time, and to use concrete blocks to form the beds.

For the April National Poetry Month Blog Tour hosted by Savvy Verse and Wit, I blogged on Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child," It had been a while since I had read that poem but it came back to me easily.

I have finished three books for book tours/review:
Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates, for tomorrow
When the Cypress Whispers by Yvette Manessis Corporon, for Wednesday
Murder on Bamboo Lane by Naomi Hirahari, for later this month
and am in the middle of reading
A Tiger's Tale by Laura Morrigan for a May 11 tour

Other books I've started include
The Year She Left Us by Katherine Ma
Death Money by Henry Chang

 A few interesting novel, mixed genres, came in this past week:

Jack of Spies

Dear Lucy

All Day and Night

North of Normal

Eyes on You

Mrs. Hemingway

Click on the title captions for details re the books.

I have my reading cut out for me. How about you?

National Poetry Month: "Spring and Fall: to a Young Child" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The 2014 National Poetry Month Blog Tour is hosted by Serena at Savvy Verse and Wit to celebrate poets and poetry in April. Let me share one of my favorite poems.

Spring and Fall
  by Gerard Manley Hopkins

              to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16074#sthash.GsA1Cneo.dpuf

My thoughts: I fell in love with this short poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins when our English teacher introduced it to us in our first year in college. A published poet herself, she read it with such clarity and conviction and feeling that I felt I was able to understand Margaret and feel just as she did!

Margaret the young child has seen the renewal of spring and is just now realizing what autumn means, when the leaves turn golden and fall - the end of spring and summer, a loss that to us symbolize the end of life or of innocence. Hopkins turns this into a moral or insight into human nature and predicts that Margaret, in her youth just now experiencing the sorrow of loss, will experience ever greater loss in the future, so that autumn and the changing of seasons will gradually cease to distress her.

What are your reactions to the poem and what do you take from it?
How do you respond to the rhythm and the rhyme of the lines?
Try reading it out loud for the full effect.

Born at Stratford, Essex, England, on July 28, 1844, Gerard Manley Hopkins is regarded as one the Victorian era's greatest poets. 

He was raised in a prosperous and artistic family. He attended Balliol College, Oxford, in 1863, where he studied Classics. In 1864, Hopkins first read John Henry Newman's Apologia pro via sua, which discussed the author's reasons for converting to Catholicism. Two years later, Newman himself received Hopkins into the Roman Catholic Church. Hopkins soon decided to become a priest himself, and in 1867 he entered a Jesuit novitiate near London. At that time, he vowed to "write no more...unless it were by the wish of my superiors." Hopkins burnt all of the poetry he had written to date and would not write poems again until 1875.

He spent nine years in training at various Jesuit houses throughout England. He was ordained in 1877 and for the next seven years carried his duties teaching and preaching in London, Oxford, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Stonyhurst. In 1875, Hopkins began to write again after a German ship, the Deutschland, was wrecked during a storm at the mouth of the Thames River. Many of the passengers, including five Franciscan nuns, died. Although conventional in theme, Hopkins poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland" introduced what Hopkins called "sprung rhythm." By not limiting the number of "slack" or unaccented syllables, Hopkins allowed for more flexibility in his lines and created new acoustic possibilities. In 1884, he became a professor of Greek at the Royal University College in Dublin. He died five years later from typhoid fever.

 Although his poems were never published during his lifetime, his friend poet Robert Bridges edited a volume of Hopkins' Poems that first appeared in 1918. In addition to developing new rhythmic effects, Hopkins was also very interested in ways of rejuvenating poetic language. He regularly placed familiar words into new and surprising contexts. He also often employed compound and unusual word combinations. As he wrote to in a letter to Bridges, "No doubt, my poetry errs on the side of oddness…" Twentieth century poets such as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Charles Wright have enthusiastically turned to his work for its inventiveness and rich aural patterning. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/284#sthash.JeZaYNwR.dpuf

Wordless Wednesday: Spring?

For more pictures, visit Wordless Wednesday. 

Looking forward to the greening of our maple. Spring seems very slow this year, but a few shoots are in the flower beds. This ornamental maple, picture taken in summer, has yet to show any leaf buds. Can't wait for those purple buds that open up into this vibrant green. 

First Chapter: Death on Eat Street by J.J. Cook

First Chapter, First Paragraph is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea.
Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B; choose two teaser sentences from a random page of your current read.

Title: Death on Eat Street: A Biscuit Bowl Food Truck Mystery by J.J. Cook
Published April 1, 2014; Berkley
Genre: cozy mystery

First paragraph:

It had been the worst day of my life.
I parked my Biscuit Bowl food truck beside the diner and closed my eyes as I rested my head on the steering wheel. Outside,the fiberglass biscuit on top of the food truck stopped twirling.
How could so much go wrong in one day?

Book description: Zoe Chase always wanted to own her own restaurant—but first, she’ll have to serve up a heaping helping of meals on wheels, with a side of mystery… (goodreads)

Based on the opening paragraph, would you keep reading this cozy?

See my brief review/comments on goodreads.

Sunday Salon: A Humid Spring

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Also visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer; It's Monday: What Are You Reading? at Book Journey. Also visit Mailbox Monday, hosted by Vicki, Leslie, and Serena.

Spring has finally arrived but the barometer readings have changed. I really must move to a warm and DRY climate but one without hurricanes (Florida) or earthquakes (California) or summers that are like putting your head in an oven (Arizona). Now where could that be?

On my to be read list:

Spiritual medium Emma Whitecastle knows a good ghost when she feels one—like her own sweet Granny Apples, long gone but still as famous for her apple pies as she is for helping her great-great-great-granddaughter get to the core of the most baffling mysteries... When Emma gets word of a sticky spirit problem in Las Vegas, she and the ghost of Granny Apples hit the road for Sin City. Dolly, a former showgirl,  is haunted by Lenny, a dead Vegas hood worried about an aging mobster named Nemo coming after the leggy old bombshell.
When Nemo is found dead, Dolly goes missing—and lands herself on a short list of suspects. Emma and Granny Apples aren’t about to fold until they save Dolly’s neck and put her past to rest.  (goodreads)

1559. Elizabeth is about to be crowned queen of England and wants her personal musician Kate Haywood to prepare music for the festivities. New to London, Kate must learn the ways of city life …and once again school herself as a sleuth. Making her way among the courtiers who vie for the new queen’s favor, Kate befriends Lady Mary Everley. Mary is very close to Elizabeth. With their red hair and pale skin, they even resemble each other—which makes Mary’s murder all the more chilling. But when another redhead is murdered, Kate uncovers a deadly web of motives lurking just beneath the polite court banter, and follows the trail of a killer whose grievance can only be answered with royal blood. (goodreads)

The long-awaited next installment in the Detective Jack Yu series.
When the body of an unidentified Asian man is found in the Harlem River, NYPD Detective Jack Yu embarks on a journey into Chinatown's restaurants, strip clubs, and seedy gambling establishments to investigate. (goodreads)

What's on your shelves waiting to be read?