Scribbles & Wanderlust
  • Home
  • About
  • Clients
  • Book Reviews
    • Reviews 2012
    • Reviews 2013
    • Reviews 2014
    • Reviews 2015
    • Reviews 2016
    • Reviews 2017
    • Reviews 2018
    • Reviews 2019
    • Reviews 2020
    • Reviews 2021
    • Reviews 2022
  • Features
    • Deal Announcement
    • End of Year Book Survey
    • If We Were Having Coffee
    • This Season’s Rewind
  • Discover a New Read
    • Adult
    • Young Adult
    • Middle Grade
  • Tag: genre: nonfiction

    • On Minimizing Tech

      Posted at 1:31 pm by Laura, on March 8, 2020

      It’s not typical of me to read nonfiction by choice. I read it for academic purposes, I read it for book club discussions, but by choice…that’s rare. And this year seems to have a theme: minimizing tech, or rather, utilizing it in a way that it doesn’t control me.

      This has been something of a journey I’ve battled with for several years now. I’d scroll endlessly through FB in college, I would tweet silly things about my life, I’d post pictures on IG. But then I became an agent and everything I said was scrutinized down to the letter. So I backed off Twitter over the years, to the point where I only tweet agent-related business. No more scrolling and shouting into the echo chamber and losing focus. Then the 2016 election happened and I had to back off FB because it hurt so much to see so many loved ones be so…closed-minded. And then IG makes me roll my eyes constantly because people are concerned about stats and numbers and followers and likes, and frankly I don’t give a damn about that — I just like the pretty pictures and book recommendations and travel shots.

      But that’s just social media. What about other media? Binge-watching TV, my laptop constantly on and open, frequently picking up my phone…these are habits I’ve developed over the years and I know I’m not alone. What are ways I can minimize tech and live a full life?

      Enter Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport (★★★★★). Newport utilizes history, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and his own experiment with 1600 participants to explain why we are addicted to our phones/tech/social media, and how we can reclaim our lives—our hobbies, our solitude, our social selves. It’s not anti-tech. It’s pro-minimalism. And we all need this book. If you find yourself reaching for your phone while waiting in line just to check the screen, you need this book. If you find yourself scrolling and liking and commenting while your child is taking a bath and trying to show you their imaginative underwater adventure, you need this book. If you feel anxious and overwhelmed at work so all you do during breaks or when you get home is crash on the couch exhausted, binge-watching Netflix and playing games or scrolling through social media and you still feel drained and exhausted and worthless, you need this book. If you’ve taken social media breaks cold turkey for a few days and came back and felt FOMO or overwhelmed, you need this book. If you say “I just don’t have time anymore” when someone asks about your past hobbies or long-term projects, you need this book. If you don’t have a whole lot of apps on your phone, your screen time each day is tracked at about avg 2 hours/day, and you still text instead of actually talk/see your friends, you need this book.

      I’ve since set perimeters and limits on app usage and daily screen time on my phone, and though it’s difficult, it’s actually been quite the blessing. I’ve been able to focus on work better, I’ve been able to dabble in old hobbies again, and I’m able to read more too. Conversations with loved ones are deeper as well, which leads to my next recommendation…

      You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy (★★★) discusses the difference between deep, natural listening, and surface level listening. We know what listening looks like (eye contact, nodding, reactions), but really listening involves “reading between the lines” of what someone is saying. This is absolutely something I need to work on. Other forms of listening—but without tech—is to put the phones down, turn off the TVs, close the laptops, and actually have a conversation away from tech. Family dinners, basic chores and tasks, even if you’re doing something else but without tech, you’re more receptive to deep conversation. Listening isn’t latching on to what someone says and talking about yourself and how you compare; it’s hearing the context of someone’s joys and concerns and asking for more about that. It’s amazing how many people feel they aren’t heard. And it’s sad. While this book didn’t have concrete exercises for me to try like Digital Minimalism, it did give me a lot to think about in conversations with others.

      This isn’t a standard book review post, I know. But I felt these books needed some context for my journey. Next up on the library holds list is Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee. Though not in the realm of digital minimalism, it will be in the realm of learning to step away, take deep breaths, and reevaluate priorities.

      I’m quite excited about this journey. I hope to learn from it and utilize the tools they provide.

      Posted in books, Reviews 2020 | 0 Comments | Tagged book review, digital minimalism, genre: nonfiction, mini review
    • Mini Reviews

      Posted at 1:55 pm by Laura, on December 1, 2019
      38502471
      43426115
      34267285
      288159._SY475_

      I’d Rather Be Reading by Anne Bogel — ★★★★★ — If you’re a reader you’ll find at least one thing in this book that is relatable to you! If not the entire book! Sharing your books with friends (or not), repeatedly going to the library and grabbing armfuls of books and holds (even though you have plenty of books at home you own and haven’t read), never leaving the bookstore without buying at least one book, knowing that book recommendations need more than “it’s great!” because readers all have different reading tastes, getting so lost in an audiobook the day has flown by and you didn’t do any housework or errands, rereading favorites because you love them (or not because you don’t want to mess with the memory of them), reading books with your children, racing to finish a book club title (or not and accepting the end will be spoiled), running out of space in your home for your books, buying and building more bookcases, dreading a move because of all the books you own, not owning a whole lot because you go to the library always, owning a lot because you go to the bookstore always, buying books to support authors but never reading them, buying used books because you like holding previously loved books, buying new books and cracking the spine…it’s endless!

      The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott — ★★★.5 — It’s good. The writing is perfect for historical fiction, the right atmosphere and tone for a Cold War novel. I enjoyed it enough to want to keep reading. But by the end it felt rushed, a little deflated. The love story fell apart/fizzled, and I found Boris to be incredibly selfish and thought Olga had it coming. There may have been some aspects of the CIA storyline that was totally over my head and implied and I simply didn’t catch on—some threads seemed loose, frayed, unanswered. I think my attention fell apart a bit when I spotted a major editorial error in a chapter heading. That said, I liked stylistically what was done with the novel. I liked you didn’t have to read Dr Zhivago in order to read and follow the story. I love that art prevails all, that art can reflect culture and criticize. I want to know more about the Cold War, about how people knew he was writing Dr Z and that the whole world knew before it was even published that it was criticizing the Soviet Union. I wanted more about the spying—lots of drops but not a whole lot of the actual acquisition of things—and perhaps more of Boris’s wife and what she was feeling about all of this (was she targeted too or just Olga? What’s the point of “hiding” the relationship when everyone knows what you’re doing, you pig, Boris? Sorry, moving on…). I loved the development of the CIA love story, and wanted more that too—with a more concrete ending please!

      The Trespasser by Tana French — ★★★★ — The sixth of French’s Dublin Murder Squad series held up to her usual literary detective fiction flair. It was a totally new experience for me to listen on audio to a Dublin Murder Squad detective rather than reading—the Irish narrator really grabbed and pulled me in. Hearing the thoughts aloud instead of reading them myself really put me on edge too, truly believing Conway’s paranoia was real and rooted in logic. French’s mysteries have always appealed to me. Her writing is engaging yet literary, smart yet accessible. I would not lump French in the same wheelhouse as Flynn or Hawkins or Ware as so many do—she stands out on her own. She’s a mystery writer for those who aren’t into mysteries (like me!). I also really enjoy that we follow a squad and not the same protagonist with each novel. The secondary character from the previous book becomes the main character for the next—and so forth. The trouble is…I think this series is now complete? Conway was the secondary character of the previous book, The Secret Place, but she’s still with her partner from that book in here too. I’m curious to see if French will continue the series, and how, now that we’ve closed this particular chapter of the Dublin Murder Squad narrative.

      And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander — ★★★ — Mystery isn’t really my jam to read, but I devour BBC/Masterpiece Mystery shows. This young Victorian woman who goes off on adventures and still stays true to the constraints of her society—a modern woman for her era without seeming anachronistic—happens to be at the center of a mysterious death. Lady Emily is recently widowed and ready to get out of mourning. But upon discovery of her late husband’s journals and fascination with Greek artifacts, Emily starts to fall in love with the man he was and learn that his death was…quite fishy. From London to Paris to Santorini to Cairo, Lady Emily must find the truth to her husband’s death and the mystery of stolen museum artifacts, all without shocking her mother half to death turning down marriage proposals. Emily was loads of fun and super intelligent. This had more dialogue than I expected, but the feel of the novel made me think, “If Jane Austen was born now and wrote historical mysteries, this is what she’d write.” It’s witty and clever, had lots of red herrings, and I was guessing through the end. I’d definitely pick up the next in the series!

      Posted in books, Reviews 2019 | 0 Comments | Tagged book review, genre: adult fiction, genre: historical fiction, genre: mystery, genre: nonfiction, mini review
    • Mini Reviews II

      Posted at 7:05 am by Laura, on June 4, 2015

      Mini Reviews

      Quick, bite-sized reviews of fast, enjoyable reads!
      A penny for thoughts, a snappy two-cent reflection! 

      23395733Emma by Alexander McCall Smith

      Publisher: Pantheon
      Published: April 7
      Genre: adult fiction, contemporary
      ISBN: 9780804197953
      Rating: ★★.5
      Summary: The summer after she graduates from university, Emma Woodhouse returns to Highbury, where she will live with her health-conscious father until she launches her interior-design business. In the meantime, she will offer guidance to those less wise than she is in the ways of the world. This summer brings new faces into the sphere of Emma’s not always perfectly felicitous council: Harriet Smith, a naïve assistant at the ESL school; Frank Churchill, the stepson of Emma’s former governess; and, of course, the perfect Jane Fairfax.

      Mini Review: While I own one of the Austen Project novels, I’d yet to read one. I also haven’t read Smith before, so my only comparison is to the original Austen (also, not my favorite Austen novel). When I read this contemporary retelling, I found it entertaining — certainly had that Austen voice — but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. Contemporary is meant to not only be set in our time, but also have today’s mannerisms and culture and dialogue. I was expecting an English version of Clueless or Emma Approved. Smith did such a great job writing like Austen that I actually had a hard time believing this was set in the modern day (again, not sure if this is Smith’s normal writing style or if this is part of the Austen Project guidelines). This is also a very condensed version of the original, with only the major events stringing together nicely across a summer. The downside: less George. I wanted more George and Emma interaction! All that aside, I felt the characters’ backgrounds fitting for modern day — Emma as an interior designer, for one — and the satire amusing. If I loved the Austen novel more, I may have enjoyed this one more, as well.

      This qualifies as book #3 in my resolution to read 10 library books in 2015. 

      13001716Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

      Publisher: Random House Audio
      Published: November 2011
      Genre: memoir
      ISBN: 9780307939814
      Rating:
       ★★★
      Summary: Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.

      Mini Review: I listened to this in the car on the way back from BEA, and I was genuinely surprised how much I enjoyed it. Mindy is nothing like her characters on television. She’s funny, insightful, and intelligent. Every story she told felt honest and true, and she managed to make me laugh without using vulgarity or racism. Her memoir managed to make me believe we were best friends.

      This qualifies as book #4 in my resolution to read 10 library books in 2015. 

      23013676 The Girl with the Glass Bird by Esme Kerr

      Publisher: Chicken House
      Published: March 2015
      Genre: middle grade, mystery
      ISBN: 9780545699846
      Rating:
       ★★
      Summary: Orphan Edie’s been sent to Knight’s Haddon, a private boarding school, by her uncle to investigate the disappearance of a precious crystal bird that belongs to his client’s daughter. Anastasia, a Russian royal, has a fragile disposition and a melodramatic bent — or so the headmistress and all the other girls say. Edie’s assignment is to find the missing glass bird, befriend the troubled blueblood, and keep a watchful eye on her. When the two girls uncover a dangerous plot, how can they stop it and who can they trust?

      Mini Review: I was expecting something a bit more adventurous and mysterious. While I really enjoyed Edie’s character — she certainly doesn’t do well as a spy, but it was fun to watch her attempt to sneak around — I found myself drawn to the adults in the story. With every turn of phrase, with every tiny scene alone in their minds, I was drawn to that aspect of the mystery more than what the girls were up to. This book also contains a lot of fears over mental illness as well, paranoia and the like, and I wasn’t sure if it worked. I’d recommend this book to light mystery readers in need of a boarding school setting.

      This qualifies as book #5 in my resolution to read 10 library books in 2015. 

      Posted in books, Reviews 2015 | 2 Comments | Tagged books, genre: adult fiction, genre: classics, genre: contemporary, genre: middle grade, genre: mystery, genre: nonfiction, mini review, review
    • Upcoming Books! [35]

      Posted at 2:28 pm by Laura, on September 16, 2012

      Title: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
      Author: Tom Reiss
      Genre: history, biography
      Publisher: Crown
      Publishing Date: September 18
      Summary: Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo – a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
      The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.
      Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave — who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time.
      Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution, in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East – until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.
      The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.

      ~

      Title: The Cutting Season
      Author: Attica Locke
      Genre: mystery
      Publisher: Harper
      Publishing Date: September 18
      Summary: The American South in the twenty-first century. A plantation owned for generations by a rich family. So much history. And a dead body.
      Just after dawn, Caren walks the grounds of Belle Vie, the historic plantation house in Louisiana that she has managed for four years. Today she sees nothing unusual, apart from some ground that has been dug up by the fence bordering the sugar can fields. Assuming an animal has been out after dark, she asks the gardener to tidy it up. Not long afterwards, he calls her to say it’s something else. Something terrible. A dead body. At a distance, she missed her. The girl, the dirt and the blood. Now she has police on site, an investigation in progress, and a member of staff no one can track down. And Caren keeps uncovering things she will wish she didn’t know. As she’s drawn into the dead girl’s story, she makes shattering discoveries about the future of Belle Vie, the secrets of its past, and sees, more clearly than ever, that Belle Vie, its beauty, is not to be trusted.

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: mystery, genre: nonfiction, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [32]

      Posted at 10:14 pm by Laura, on August 26, 2012

      Title: The Distance Between Us
      Author: Reyna Grande
      Genre: memoir, biography
      Publisher: Atria Books
      Publishing Date: August 28
      Summary: When Reyna Grande’s father leaves his wife and three children behind in a village in Mexico to make the dangerous trek across the border to the United States, he promises he will soon return from “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) with enough money to build them a dream house where they can all live together. His promises become harder to believe as months turn into years. When he summons his wife to join him, Reyna and her siblings are deposited in the already overburdened household of their stern, unsmiling grandmother.
      The three siblings are forced to look out for themselves; in childish games they find a way to forget the pain of abandonment and learn to solve very adult problems. When their mother at last returns, the reunion sets the stage for a dramatic new chapter in Reyna’s young life: her own journey to “El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father.

      ~

      Title: The Beautiful Mystery
      Author: Louise Penny
      Genre: mystery, thriller
      Publisher: Minotaur Books
      Publishing Date: August 28
      Summary: No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world-famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is so profound it is known as “the beautiful mystery.” But when the renowned choir director is murdered, the lock on the monastery’s massive wooden door is drawn back to admit Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Sûreté du Québec. There they discover disquiet beneath the silence, discord in the apparent harmony. One of the brothers, in this life of  prayer and contemplation, has been contemplating murder. As the peace of the monastery crumbles, Gamache is forced to confront some of his own demons, as well as those roaming the remote corridors. Before finding the killer, before restoring peace, the Chief must first consider the divine, the human, and the cracks in between.

      ~

      Title: Splendors and Glooms
      Author: Laura Amy Schlitz
      Genre: children’s, fantasy, gothic
      Publisher: Candlewick
      Publishing Date: August 28
      Summary: The master puppeteer, Gaspare Grisini, is so expert at manipulating his stringed puppets that they appear alive. Clara Wintermute, the only child of a wealthy doctor, is spellbound by Grisini’s act and invites him to entertain at her birthday party. Seeing his chance to make a fortune, Grisini accepts and makes a splendidly gaudy entrance with caravan, puppets, and his two orphaned assistants.
      Lizzie Rose and Parsefall are dazzled by the Wintermute home. Clara seems to have everything they lack — adoring parents, warmth, and plenty to eat. In fact, Clara’s life is shadowed by grief, guilt, and secrets. When Clara vanishes that night, suspicion of kidnapping falls upon the puppeteer and, by association, Lizzie Rose and Parsefall.
      As they seek to puzzle out Clara’s whereabouts, Lizzie and Parse uncover Grisini’s criminal past and wake up to his evil intentions. Fleeing London, they find themselves caught in a trap set by Grisini’s ancient rival, a witch with a deadly inheritance to shed before it’s too late.

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: children, genre: fiction, genre: gothic, genre: mystery, genre: nonfiction, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [28]

      Posted at 12:00 pm by Laura, on July 29, 2012

      Hello all! You may have noticed that I’m back from my vacation, as I was able to publish some book reviews. However, the progress of this blog from hiatus back to full news status will take a few more weeks. This coming week I’m preparing my move out east, and then it’ll be a bit before I have internet access full-time again. Graduate school and my whole new life is coming so quickly!

      Meanwhile, I will do my best to publish Upcoming Books and Book Reviews until I’m back in the full swing of things. Thank you for your patience, and for following this blog!

      ~

      Title: The Light Between Oceans
      Author: M.L. Stedman
      Genre: historical fiction
      Publisher: Scribner
      Publishing Date: July 31
      Summary: In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby. Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the dead man and the infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim the child as their own and name her Lucy, but a rift begins to grow between them. When Lucy is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world…and one of them is desperate to find her lost baby.

      ~

      Title: The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of Three Sisters
      Author: Juliet Barker
      Genre: nonfiction
      Publisher: Pegasus Books
      Publishing Date: August 1
      Summary: In a revised and updated edition, the real story of the Brontë sisters, by distinguished scholar and historian Juliet Barker.
      The story of the tragic Brontë family is familiar to everyone: we all know about the half-mad, repressive father, the drunken, drug-addicted wastrel of a brother, wildly romantic Emily, unrequited Anne, and “poor Charlotte.” Or do we? These stereotypes of the popular imagination are precisely that—imaginary—created by amateur biographers like Elizabeth Gaskell who were primarily novelists and were attracted by the tale of an apparently doomed family of genius.
      Juliet Barker’s landmark book is the first definitive history of the Brontës. It demolishes the myths, yet provides startling new information that is just as compelling—but true. Based on firsthand research among all the Brontë manuscripts and among contemporary historical documents never before used by Brontë biographers, this book is both scholarly and compulsively readable.
      The Brontës is a revolutionary picture of the world’s favorite literary family.

      Beyond beyond BEYOND excited for this one!!! If I was working on a literature PhD, it would be Brontë studies! To see Barker’s ranking of the novels, see this link.

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 2 Comments | Tagged genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: nonfiction, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [24]

      Posted at 9:30 am by Laura, on July 2, 2012

      Apologies for the late post! Good thing they come out on Tuesdays, yeah?

      ~

      Title: Gold
      Author: Chris Cleave
      Genre: fiction
      Publisher: Simon & Schuster
      Publishing Date: July 3
      Summary: Gold is the story of Zoe and Kate, world-class athletes who have been friends and rivals since their first day of Elite training. They’ve loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, consoled, gloried, and grown up together. Now on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, both women will be tested to their physical and emotional limits. They must confront each other and their own mortality to decide, when lives are at stake: What would you sacrifice for the people you love, if it meant giving up the thing that was most important to you in the world?

      ~

      Title: Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel
      Author: John Guy
      Genre: biography
      Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
      Publishing Date: July 3
      Summary: Becket’s life story has been often told but never so incisively reexamined and vividly rendered as it is in John Guy’s hands. The son of middle-class Norman parents, Becket rose against all odds to become the second most powerful man in England. As King Henry II’s chancellor, Becket charmed potentates and popes, tamed overmighty barons, and even personally led knights into battle. After his royal patron elevated him to archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, however, Becket clashed with the King. Forced to choose between fealty to the crown and the values of his faith, he repeatedly challenged Henry’s authority to bring the church to heel. Drawing on the full panoply of medieval sources, Guy sheds new light on the relationship between the two men, separates truth from centuries of mythmaking, and casts doubt on the long-held assumption that the headstrong rivals were once close friends. He also provides the fullest accounting yet for Becket’s seemingly radical transformation from worldly bureaucrat to devout man of God.

      ~

      Title: Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone
      Author: Kat Rosenfield
      Genre: young adult
      Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
      Publishing Date: July 5
      Summary: Becca has always longed to break free from her small, backwater hometown. But the discovery of an unidentified dead girl on the side of a dirt road sends the town–and Becca–into a tailspin. Unable to make sense of the violence of the outside world creeping into her backyard, Becca finds herself retreating inward, paralyzed from moving forward for the first time in her life.
      Short chapters detailing the last days of Amelia Anne Richardson’s life are intercut with Becca’s own summer as the parallel stories of two young women struggling with self-identity and relationships on the edge twist the reader closer and closer to the truth about Amelia’s death.

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: fiction, genre: nonfiction, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [23]

      Posted at 12:00 pm by Laura, on June 24, 2012

      Title: Between the Lines
      Author: Jodi Picoult, Samantha van Leer
      Genre: young adult
      Publisher: Simon Pulse
      Publishing Date: June 26
      Summary: What happens when happily ever after…isn’t?
      Delilah is a bit of a loner who prefers spending her time in the school library with her head in a book—one book in particular. Between the Lines may be a fairy tale, but it feels real. Prince Oliver is brave, adventurous, and loving. He really speaks to Delilah.
      And then one day Oliver actually speaks to her. Turns out, Oliver is more than a one-dimensional storybook prince. He’s a restless teen who feels trapped by his literary existence and hates that his entire life is predetermined. He’s sure there’s more for him out there in the real world, and Delilah might just be his key to freedom.
      Delilah and Oliver work together to attempt to get Oliver out of his book, a challenging task that forces them to examine their perceptions of fate, the world, and their places in it. And as their attraction to each other grows along the way, a romance blossoms that is anything but a fairy tale.

      This looks like it’s going to be a neat book. The idea was all Picoult’s daughter’s, van Leer. They wrote this across several years together during her winter and summer breaks. Pretty cool!

      ~

      Title: One Breath Away
      Author: Heather Gudenkauf
      Genre: suspense, mystery
      Publisher: Mira
      Publishing Date: June 26
      Summary: In the midst of a sudden spring snowstorm, an unknown man armed with a gun walks into an elementary school classroom. Outside the school, the town of Broken Branch watches and waits.
      Officer Meg Barrett holds the responsibility for the town’s children in her hands. Will Thwaite, reluctantly entrusted with the care of his two grandchildren by the daughter who left home years earlier, stands by helplessly and wonders if he has failed his child again. Trapped in her classroom, Evelyn Oliver watches for an opportunity to rescue the children in her care. And thirteen-year-old Augie Baker, already struggling with the aftermath of a terrible accident that has has brought her to Broken Branch, will risk her own safety to protect her little brother.
      As tension mounts with each passing minute, the hidden fears and grudges of the small town are revealed as the people of Broken Branch race to uncover the identity of the stranger who holds their children hostage.

      ~

      Title: The Receptionist
      Author: Janet Groth
      Genre: memoir, nonfiction
      Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
      Publishing Date: June 26
      Summary: Thanks to a successful interview with the painfully shy E.B. White, a beautiful, 19-year-old, blue-eyed blonde from the cornfields of Iowa lands a job as a receptionist at “The New Yorker” magazine. There she stays two decades, becoming general all-around factotum–watching and registering the comings and goings, marriages and divorces, scandalous affairs, failures, triumphs, and tragedies of the eccentric inhabitants of the 18th floor. Though she dreamed of becoming a writer, she never advanced at the magazine. This memoir of a particular time and place is as much about why that was so as it is about Groth’s fascinating relationships with John Berryman, Joseph Mitchell, Muriel Spark, as well as E.J. Kahn, Calvin Trillin, Renata Adler, Peter DeVries, Charles Addams, and many other “New Yorker” contributors and bohemian denizens of Greenwich Village in its heyday. Eventually, Groth would have to leave “The New Yorker” in order to find herself.

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: adult fiction, genre: fiction, genre: mystery, genre: nonfiction, genre: romance, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [22]

      Posted at 10:09 am by Laura, on June 18, 2012

      Title: Existence
      Author: David Brin
      Genre: sci-fi
      Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
      Publishing Date: June 19
      Summary: Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an “alien artifact.”
      Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

      ~

      Title: This is Not a Test
      Author: Courtney Summers
      Genre: young adult, post-apocalyptic
      Publisher: St Martin’s Griffin
      Publishing Date: June 19
      Summary: It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self.
      To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live.
      But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside.
      When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?

      ~

      Title: Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
      Author: Kate Summerscale
      Genre: history, nonfiction
      Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
      Publishing Date: June 19
      Summary: Headstrong, high-spirited, and already widowed, Isabella Walker became Mrs. Henry Robinson at age 31 in 1844. Her first husband had died suddenly, leaving his estate to a son from a previous marriage, so she inherited nothing. A successful civil engineer, Henry moved them, by then with two sons, to Edinburgh’s elegant society in 1850. But Henry traveled often and was cold and remote when home, leaving Isabella to her fantasies.
      No doubt thousands of Victorian women faced the same circumstances, but Isabella chose to record her innermost thoughts—and especially her infatuation with a married Dr. Edward Lane—in her diary. Over five years the entries mounted—passionate, sensual, suggestive. One fateful day in 1858 Henry chanced on the diary and, broaching its privacy, read Isabella’s intimate entries. Aghast at his wife’s perceived infidelity, Henry petitioned for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Until that year, divorce had been illegal in England, the marital bond being a cornerstone of English life. Their trial would be a cause celebre, threatening the foundations of Victorian society with the specter of “a new and disturbing figure: a middle class wife who was restless, unhappy, avid for arousal.” Her diary, read in court, was as explosive as Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, just published in France but considered too scandalous to be translated into English until the 1880s.

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, genre: adult fiction, genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: nonfiction, genre: sci-fi, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [14]

      Posted at 7:30 am by Laura, on April 22, 2012

      Title: The Good Father
      Author: Diane Chamberlain
      Genre: fiction
      Publisher: Mira
      Publishing Date: April 24
      Summary: Four years ago, nineteen-year-old Travis Brown made a choice: to raise his newborn daughter on his own. While most of his friends were out partying and meeting girls, Travis was at home, changing diapers and worrying about keeping food on the table. But he’s never regretted his decision. Bella is the light of his life. The reason behind every move he makes. And so far, she is fed. Cared for. Safe.But when Travis loses his construction job and his home, the security he’s worked so hard to create for Bella begins to crumble….
      Then a miracle.
      A job in Raleigh has the power to turn their fortunes around. It has to. But when Travis arrives in Raleigh, there is no job, only an offer to participate in a onetime criminal act that promises quick money and no repercussions.With nowhere else to turn, Travis must make another choice for his daughter’s sake. Even if it means he might lose her.

      ~

      Title: Unraveling
      Author: Elizabeth Norris
      Genre: young adult, paranormal
      Publisher: Balzer + Bray
      Publishing Date: April 24
      Summary: Two days before the start of her junior year, seventeen-year-old Janelle Tenner is hit by a pickup truck and killed—as in blinding light, scenes of her life flashing before her, and then nothing. Except the next thing she knows, she’s opening her eyes to find Ben Michaels, a loner from her high school whom Janelle has never talked to, leaning over her. And even though it isn’t possible, she knows—with every fiber of her being—that Ben has somehow brought her back to life.
      But her revival, and Ben’s possible role in it, is only the first of the puzzles that Janelle must solve. While snooping in her FBI agent father’s files for clues about her accident, she uncovers a clock that seems to be counting down to something—but to what? And when someone close to Janelle is killed, she can no longer deny what’s right in front of her: Everything that’s happened—the accident, the murder, the countdown clock, Ben’s sudden appearance in her life—points to the end of life as she knows it. And as the clock ticks down, she realizes that if she wants to put a stop to the end of the world, she’s going to need to uncover Ben’s secrets—and keep from falling in love with him in the process.

      ~

      Title: The Elizabethans
      Author: A.N. Wilson
      Genre: history, nonfiction
      Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
      Publishing Date: April 24
      Summary: The acknowledged master of the all-encompassing single volume of history demonstrates the profound impact the Elizabethan age has had on contemporary Britain.
      With all the panoramic sweep of his bestselling study of The Victorians, A. N. Wilson relates the exhilarating story of the Elizabethan Age. It was a time of exceptional creativity, wealth creation and political expansion. It was also a period of English history more remarkable than any other for the technicolour personalities of its leading participants.

      ~

      Books to look forward to later in 2012 and in 2013!

      • Laura L. McNeal’s Dollbaby, a debut novel pitched as in the tradition of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, set in 1964, in which a girl from the Pacific Northwest visits her estranged grandmother in New Orleans and meets Dollbaby, the maid who guides her through the ghosts of her grandmother’s past and the racial turmoil that may tear the family apart
      • Erin Kelly’s third novel The Burning Air, a psychological thriller about the family of a private school headmaster and the child he passes over for a scholarship, who spends years constructing a spectacular revenge plot against the entire family
      • Charles Graeber’s The Good Nurse, the explosive story about serial killing nurse Charles Cullen and the nine hospitals that covered up his crimes over 15 years

      Happy reading!

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, genre: adult fiction, genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: nonfiction, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    ← Older posts
    • Hello, I’m Laura!

      I'm a bookish bookworm and book hoarder. By day I'm a literary agent, and by night I'm forever rearranging my bookshelves. I could talk your ear off about Gothic literature, and in my past life people thought I'd become a professional musician. I have a fluffy black cat named Rossetti, I love to knit, tea is my drink of choice, British TV is the best, and I'm obsessed with popcorn. Welcome to Scribbles & Wanderlust! Grab your favorite hot beverage and let's chat books!
    • Search the Blog

    • Currently Reading

    • Book Review Rating Key

      ★★★ — It’s good
      ★★★★ — It’s great
      ★★★★★ — OMG LOVE!!!

    • Recent Posts

      • MSWL for 2023
      • Favorite Reads of 2022
      • Deal Announcement: Annie Cardi, YA Contemporary
      • Deal Announcement: Molly Horan, YA Contemporary
      • Deal Announcement: Ana Holguin, Romcom

Blog at WordPress.com.

Scribbles & Wanderlust
Blog at WordPress.com.
  • Follow Following
    • Scribbles & Wanderlust
    • Join 1,196 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Scribbles & Wanderlust
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...