Tag: Book Stuff

This is hosted by An Adventure in Reading

I am currently in Portand, Oregon with Kay trying hard to get to the bottom of who is sending the letters that are an assault on the church.  We are entering a meeting now with the people who have developed the software that the site is managed from.  While I know Rick is involved with this mess – Kay, who has befriended him… does not.

End of Grace by K Thomas Murphy

Review coming soon!!!

What a week!  You ever have one of those weeks where you think you didn’t do all that much until you

look back over it.  Well, this is mine.  🙂  I just had a crazy busy week but reviewing my blog posts from the last 7 days, I actually did a lot more than I thought I did.  Actually, in the blogesphere, I had a pretty great week:

• Last Monday was when I met Eve at Between the Bookendz during my Morning Meandering and loved her review on The Sweetness at the Bottom of the pie

• I also presented the question during the Monday Mind Games as to what people look for in a good book blog and loved the great answers!

• My first ever Blog Tour took place on Tuesday as I hopped on the bus and traveled a while with Kim Smith and her short sweet read of A Will to Love.

• On The Tuesday Where Are You post I was battling in England alongside Pope Joan and loving it…. still am – absolutely everyone look up this book!!!

• Wednesday, Coffee Cup and I Morning Meandered over and met Monique and the Mango Rains (love this title!) at Julie’s Jewel’s My Favorite Things

• On Wednesday I closed my reading on Pope Joan and literally sat in silence for about 30 minutes reviewing it all in my head and now sure how to put those worlds on paper.  I did.  GREAT READ.

• On Wednesday I also had a Morning Meandering Confession as to how I can get lost in the blogesphere just reading great reviews and chatting it up with amazing bloggers.

• On Thursday I reviewed a Friendship Award from Regan at Miss Remmer’s Reviews.  GREAT BLOG!

• I also posted my Guest Blogger/Author Interview on Thurday with the amazing Rachel Stolzan and we discussed her new book, The Sign for Drowning.  Excellent time with Rachel!

• On Friday I caved in and signed up for The Random Reading Challenge hosted by Carabousmom.

• On Friday I drew the winner for the Power of a Praying Wife book and our winner was RITA!!!

• Friday was also my second Blog Tour (yup – two this week!) for Tricia Goyer’s book Blue Like Play Dough.  A fun read I really enjoyed.

• Then my Morning Meandering on this day brought me to Bermudaonion’s weblog and a great (tasty even) read called Looking for Salvation at The Dairy Queen.

• Friday afternoon I offered up the weekly Freebie Friday which really was “free bee” as the book currently up for grabs is The Secret Life of Bees.  (you have until this Friday to enter!!!)

• On Saturday I took part in my first Faith in Fiction Saturday meme and enjoyed a great discussion on diversity in Christian Fiction.

• Sunday I posted the giveaway for Tales of Pruit Almus, this looks like a great read – true story, about a place for homeless children.  Cant wait to sink into this one and I have one to giveaway as well!  (Love the comments that are coming in – some made me tear up a little!)
  

• Early Sunday I posted my review for Suzanne’s Diary For Nicholas.  A total random read….  hmmmm…. I bet this qualifies for my random reading Challenge!  🙂  Anyway – great read…. quick read.

• Then I finished out what looks like a busy week by posting about my book shelves, following a discussion going around about how our books that we choose (read or unread) say something about who we are.

Here are the books that came in throughout the week:

Top right are the two giveaway books for The Sign For Drowning – this giveaway is going on currently!

Stand The Storm, and The Accountants Story all all books I won as well as the cute little orangish one in the front that came all the way from Scotland!

Also on the right the pink and white checkered one is A Better View of Paradise which is a blog tour for later this week by Randy Sue Coburn

The Enclave and Off World are new TBR’s from Bethany – my first review books  from them.

The Thirteen Days of Halloween is for a fun 31 day blog tour taking place in October – one tour spot per day… watch for that one it sounds like spooky fun!

The rest of the books are the copies for Sarah Lindberg’s Giveway coming up later this month.  if you have not checked out my interview with her I would recommend it.  Not only is she a wonderful author, but also a personal friend of mine and we will be hearing more from her in the future!

That’s my week!  In between all the book stuff I put out payroll, had a family reunion at my home and a Sundae Sunday event where I helped serve ice cream to about 60 people.  Today I meet with a young man (seriously – he is 14!) by the name of Brian who I am going to help set up a blog and get him going on YA Reviews.  Brian is years ahead in his reading and writing skills and his parents are encouraging him to do this.  If anyone has any advice for me – I would appreciate it.  I am looking for connections to YA reads that are age appropriate as well as a way to conenct him to a couple ARC’s.

Thanks everyone for stopping in and hanging with me this morning!  I hope you come back througout the week as I have a lot of fun book related stuff coming up! ~  Sheila

Anyone who knows me at all knows one of my favorite topics is books.  I think I am hard wired that way because that has pretty much been true all my life (in 2nd grade I won the class Bookworm award).

I read an interesting post at KyusiReader this weekend.  Here is what he has to say,

“I’m a firm believer that the books you have are a reflection of your personality. Never mind that you don’t get to read them, just the fact that you bought them and keep them in your bookshelf say a lot about who you are (or who you want to be).”    ~KyusiReader

Hmmmm…. so like a palm reading…. this would be a book shelf reading?  😉

Well – basically what this has amounted to is fellow book bloggers showing their book shelves and I think that is pretty awesome!  So far I have seen the “not so” shelves at J Kaye’s Book Blog, and the book shelves at For The Love of All That is Written.

So here is my reading space and the books that dwell within.  Come on in everyone!  You all are welcome and you know the coffee is on!

So come on in!  The reading is fine!  First let me explain this great space I have in my home for reading that I fondly call the Reading Room.  Up until late last summer we had our business office in our home.  This is actually the house I grew up in and once Al and I moved here after the passing of my parents, we remodeled what once was two bedrooms (one of them was mine) into the office.

Last summer, Al moved the office out to the business that is also on our property.  As I stood in this large empty space I thought what ever will I do with this room now?  Then it hit me like a ton of books (literally!) – this would be where I could gather the books I had everywhere, all in one space.  This is where I could read.

(I probably said something after that thought like “Yippy!!!!)

And here it is… my favorite place to be.  This room calms me.  When I am not running around or working, you can find me here.

This is the other side of the Reading Room.

Maybe more to the point, I should say that when I am in this room you will find me here.  Feet up, laptop on my lap, notebook to my left, books to my right.

This fun little file unit I found at Wal-Mart.  The drawers are deep and made of a sturdy cloth.  This is where I keep all the books that come in during the current week.  On Sundays I pull them out and take their picture for my Week In Review post.  Then they are filed to the TBR shelves.

This great book gadget was a find in St Cloud, Minnesota.  I believe it was meant for magazines, of course I use it for my current reading and next in line to be read books.

These are odds and end books… a mix of everything

Many of the books kept here are from this Summers Library sale.  Most of these are not yet read.

This is my Christian/Christian Fiction reads.  The “keepers”.  Most of these books when I am done reading I donate to our church library.

These are the shelves that hold most of what I have read with a mix of a few yet to be read.  Many of these are just books I love and I may never get to read them again, but I am happy just to share the house with them and the memories of reading them.

More of the same as above right.  Some people collect angels or figurines… I collect books.  Lots of big (and small) beautiful books.

…and yet more of the same category.

↓ Close ups here ↓

Probably more than you ever needed (or wanted) to know about my passion for books yet you get me going and I have trouble hitting the breaks on this topic.

If anyone else out there chooses to feature their shelves and reading space(s), please leave a link to your post below so others can stop and see the shelves that hold your reading treasures!   Take time to check out the original post at KyusiReader as well as any of the other links here to great book shelves and spaces!

As always, from one reader to another – Happy Reading!  🙂

One of my all time favorite reads is Summerhouse by Jude Deveroux.  I just adore the writing, the images that come to mind as I read about this incredible house – but even more than the house – much more than the house, it is about friendships and second chances. The title speaks to me.

Earlier this week I seen a great feature by Kay at The Infinite Shelf about different books with the same title.   I found that fascinating.  Tonight I decided to try that with Summerhouse and I am amazed at what I found!  Here are the books called Summerhouse that I found in a quick search:

My Fav…. so we shall call this Summerhouse #1:

Synopsis: Three best friends, all turning forty, celebrate at a summerhouse in Maine — and take stock of their lives, loves, and choices. A mysterious “Madame Zoya” now arrives, offering them a chance to relive any three weeks from the past.

This is Summerhouse #2….this one I have seen everywhere on book blogs.  New release, looks good.  And check it out!  Three great covers!

Synopsis:  After years of wandering from whim to whim, thirty-year-old Charlotte Wheelwright seems to have at last found her niche. The free spirit enjoys running an organic gardening business on the island of Nantucket, thanks in large part to her spry grandmother Nona, who donated a portion of land on the family’s seaside compound to get Charlotte started. Though Charlotte’s skill with plants is bringing her success, cultivating something deeper with people–particularly her handsome neighbor Coop–might be more of a challenge.

This one, #3… was released to the US in 1997

Synopsis:  When successful industrialist Alfred Dunstan arrives in the Lake District to build his family a mansion, it seems to fifteen-year-old Chrissie Ascham that something new, exciting, and more than a little unnerving has entered her life. For nothing in her carefully governed childhood – not even an amateur botanist mother or an abstracted Renaissance-obsessed father – has prepared her for the sheer raw energy of the Dunstans. Before long, she has been drawn into a world dominated by Alfred’s tyranny and his implacable war with his son, Jack – not to mention his daughter Beatrice’s passionate lust for the good things in life and the childlike gentleness of his neglected and beautiful wife, Letty. A trip to view the cultural glories of Venice turns into a sensual awakening – not only for unworldly, reflective Chrissie, but for Letty Dunstan also – setting off a spiraling sequence of passion, tragedy, and betrayal involving wartime treachery, slow and seductive blackmail, and thirty of the world’s most fabulous pearls…during the last sultry, unheeding summer before the outbreak of the Great War.

Summer House #4…. this one looks good

Synopsis:  She made a life with one man—but always loved another at…The Summer House.

Jean Stone captured readers’ imaginations with the “graceful prose, vivid imagery and compassionately drawn characters” (Publishers Weekly) of novels like Tides of the Heart and Places by the Sea. Now, in her latest novel, she reveals the public scandals of a family destined for political greatness—and the private secrets of a woman who traded her childhood dreams for a role she was born to play….

Summerhouse #5… what a cute looking book!

Synopsis:  When Grandma laughs, everybody laughs! Everyone, that is, except Ella. She’s a very serious girl. Until the day when Grandma says to her, “You have to find some sunshine inside yourself–even when it’s winter”. And she gives her granddaughter the key to the summerhouse–a world of warmth and sunshine. Full color.

Summerhouse #6…. I love this cover!

Synopsis:  1918. Young Lady Helen Barstairs, the dutiful daughter of Lord Hardingham, believes everything her mother and father tell her. So when her parents say she will never find a better husband than Richard – ‘brave, handsome, wealthy, such a charming man and quite a catch’ – she believes them, and agrees to marry him before his return to the Front. Helen hopes the letters they exchange will allow them to get to know one another but over time, Richard’s correspondence becomes increasingly cold and distant, and Helen begins to wonder just who this man she has married really is. And that’s when Oliver Donovan enters her life.Helen knew embarking on an affair was not a wise decision but, for the first time in her life, Helen knew what it felt like to be in love. With the war continuing on foreign shores, Oliver had to return to his regiment – and was never seen again. Learning she is with child, Helen confesses all to her shocked parents, who force her to give up her baby. She vows to find her child again one day. Over twenty years pass and it seems history is about to repeat itself; a new war has begun, and another young woman is about to lose her heart to a serviceman – Can lessons of the past save the heartache of a new generation?

Summerhouse #7:  This one is in Ukraine… hmmm… I have friends who are in Ukraine right now….

Synopsis:  Rose Fell’s friends think she’s taking a big risk when she leaves the security of home and career to move to the beautiful but isolated village of Grosso, near Genoa. But after a year of emotional turmoil Rose no longer has any ties back home, and she relishes the challenges of a new start.Making a home, however, in the ravishing, haunted landscape of Italy’s Riviera coast turns out to be lonelier than Rose had anticipated.

Summerhouse #8:  I just dont like the cover on this one

#9 Ok…. this one is really Summer’s House so not an exact match….

Synopsis:  In Eric Gabriel Lehman’s luminous and compelling novel, Summer’s House, three characters who each inhabit a very different aspect of New York City each find themselves searching for a place where they truly belong. Raymond, an overly cerebral seventeen-year-old, has decided it’s time for him to fall in love yet struggles with his own desires. Jerome is an unrecognized poet obsessed with the woman who threw him out when he uncovered her past. Raymond’s Uncle Lester, an uncomfortable suburbanite, is tormented by his failing business and his wife’s obscene caller. One hot summer in the 1970’s, their lives intersect, collide, pull apart and irreversibly change.

#10 I dont think I would like this one…. but it is part of the Summerhouse set

Ok so this whole post was pretty random.  I thought it would be fun to look at all the different Summer House books.  It is amazing how many share the same title.

Do you know any books out there that share the same title?

Which of these Summerhouse books would you like to read and why?

*Note – I am out of town this weekend until Saturday evening.  I will respond to all comments when I return and visit blogs on Sunday!  Thanks for visiting!  Come again soon!