Claire Cook - Must Love Dogs, A New Leash on Life
3.07.2014
Marshbury Beach Books (January 21, 2014)
Paperback and eBook
Idgie Says:
Poor Sarah - she spends all of her energy and emotion mothering her siblings and father. To the extent that her newly found love is suffering. The woman needs to man up and think about herself for a change. But..........that's just my opinion. :) Her brother is in a bind and she's spending her time nurturing him and ignoring John Cusack..... um, I mean John Anderson. (How could anyone ignore John Cusack?) No matter how strong a connection, a 6 month relationship isn't going to last if it's suddenly ignored all the time.
Will Sarah "snap out of it" and save her own relationship before it's gone? Also, given the first couple of chapters, should Sarah really have any pets of her own...... (read and you'll see what I mean by that!) Witty and sensitive at the same time, this is a perfect book to settle down with and escape your world for a while. Go boss Sarah around instead.
Click HERE to read an excerpt!
_____________________________________________________________________________
Book Description:
Life
after divorce for Sarah Hurlihy used to consist of juggling her job as a
preschool teacher with the demands of her interfering family. But after
a rocky start, Sarah and John Anderson have shared six months of dating
bliss. Now their relationship is basically on hold because Sarah's
brother, Michael, and his dog, Mother Teresa, are staying with her. And
John's new puppy, Horatio, hates Sarah. With a passion.
Michael
hopes absence will, in fact, make his wife Phoebe's heart grow fonder.
Sarah hopes she can do her sisterly duty and send Michael on his merry
way before she ends up single again herself. John hopes Sarah and his
puppy can work things out before it's too late. Sarah's bossy big
sister, Carol, hopes both Michael and their father will start dating
again.
When
Phoebe packs up their daughters and heads home to Savannah, Georgia,
Michael follows her from Marshbury, Massachusetts, and the Hurlihy clan
tags along for reinforcement. Including Dad, who has finally upgraded
his Smith Corona to a laptop and already has a date with a woman named
Sugar Butt.
__________________________________
Email
dewonthekudzu@gmail.com for information about book reviews or short stories on the site
The Country Store
3.06.2014
The Country Store
by
Bettye H. Galloway
Anyone
who grew up in the rural South prior to World War II knows that every
small community had a name. Most of them had a gristmill and a saw
mill, some of them even had a post office, a school, and a doctor, but
without a doubt all of them had a store which was the hub of the
community.
The
store in my community sat at the intersection of the crossroads, a
long, narrow frame building with a packed dirt porch held up by cedar
posts bare of bark, but with stubs on the posts where limbs had been cut
with a handsaw. On a hot summer day, resin would still ooze from the
posts. The porch had never been floored, but the dirt had been packed
hard by years of traffic of work shoes. The porch was the heart of the
community, the place where farmers gathered to meet and greet, to
discuss the weather and politics, to discuss the state of the crops in
the field, to trade knives, and to play dominoes and checkers with soft
drink caps on a hand-drawn cardboard box. It didn’t matter that no
purchases were made, or needed, the men simply needed to “go to the
store.” The porch was furnished with nail kegs, one for the boards for
the checkers and domino games, and the others for seats for the
players. In one corner of the porch was the gasoline tank with its
glass upper tank holding and measuring the gasoline as the handle pumped
the desired sale. On a porch post beside the gas tank was a flat board
for use when a tube had to be patched--usually with a “hot patch” which
required a roughening of the damaged area. With the patch, material in
a tiny flat pan was lit, allowed to get hot, and then applied to the
tube to seal the hole.
Ah,
but the inside of the store was a treasure trove! Always dark and
gloomy because no electricity was available, there were delightful items
everywhere. On one side of the aisle, the shelves held canned goods
in a very limited supply because the locals grew and preserved all their
needed fruits and vegetables. But tea and coffee were staples that had
to be purchased, and the counter always held a round block of cheese
along with, wonder of wonders, jars of stick candy and packs of gum.
The shelves on the other side of the aisle were dedicated to pots and
pans and other household goods as well as work shoes and denim pants and
shirts.
A
corner in the rear of the store was partitioned into a small floored
interior room completely lined with a metal screen to provide a barrier
for mice where flour, meal, sugar, and animal feed were kept. The
center part of the rear held a wood heater in a box filled with sand
which heated the store in winter, and where the checkers and domino
games were held after the crops were gathered.
Unlike
modern day grocery stores, customers did not help themselves to
anything. The store clerk retrieved the requested items, carried them
to the cash register, took the payment, or in some cases entered them,
item by item, into a ledger and had the customer sign the page for
future payment. Also in the front beside the door stood a massive red
box which held icy cold NEHI Peach Sodas and Grapettes which I was
allowed if I had been exceptionally good!
A
way of life was lost when country stores were replaced by Krogers and
Wal Marts. I learned a lot about life under the porch of a country
store, including pumping gas, slicing cheese, and other similar things
which formed the basis for my future. Checkers, anyone?
__________________________________
Email
dewonthekudzu@gmail.com for information about book reviews or short stories on the site
An Inspiration to us All!
3.05.2014
This is not a book review, this is an inspiration review!
We always hear that it's never too late to do something in life we want to do. That if the urge is there we should try it. Many of us don't. But when I was at Southern Voices a few weeks ago I met a woman who could inspire us all to grow and to keep after that dream.
A lovely woman, of a certain age, came up to me and started chatting. She was glowing with vitality. As we were leaving the author event she stopped me, opened my purse and dropped a book in. "Uh-oh" was my first thought. Another self-published book expected to be reviewed. I left it in my purse (others might have simply placed it on a table and walked away, but she was so nice I simply couldn't do that), and went on my way for the day.
I forgot about the book until the other day. I decided that before setting it in a dark corner of the bookshelf I might as well take a look.
How glad I am that I did! While this book isn't necessarily for public consumption - it's more of a personal memoir/journal to her grandchildren - I was actually grabbed by the first chapter. This woman lived a life and wrote about it with emotion jumping off the page. Then I flipped to the back - Louise had written her book at around the age of 84!
I sent her a little note - "It is an absolutely lovely memoir of your life. Vibrant in it's emotion. I felt your pain when Jerry simply disappeared, when your husband became tyrannical and when your son passed. I enjoyed learning about your accomplishments in life and the struggles you endured to continue to grow."
Louise teaches right here that you can go after that dream. She decided the grandchildren needed a book - so she wrote one. They will be so proud of her when they're older. Her children and husband and friends should be so proud of her now!
So the moral of this post - Keep after that dream - you want to write - go for it!
If you might be interested in the book I read, please go take a closer look at it HERE.
----------------------------------------
To continue in this vein, I'm refreshing a short composition I wrote a few years ago - I keep this on the sidebar of the Dew at all times.
_________________________________
What is a Writer?
What is a writer? This has always been a bone of contention between people with opinions.
Many believe that true writers sweat over their words, feel deep angst over every sentence. That they are only viable writers if they have no other interests, careers and nearly starve to death tapping out 2,000 words a day. The words must be deep, meaningful, full of mystery and knowledge.
This of course drives inexperienced writers to back off and and feel that they'll never be considered to be worthy of reading.
To this I say, "Bull."
Writing is pure enjoyment. It's expressions, dreams, memories, humor, desires and fears. It's free flowing thinking on paper. No writing should be labeled as too mundane, silly, odd or dumb.
We need our great historical novels, our short humor books, our love stories, our poems, our 3 paragraph stories.
All writing is important to someone, maybe a lot of someones. I personally wrote for years and really enjoyed those simple emails that came my way - "You made me laugh", "You made me cry", etc. No one ever said that I solved a mystery in life or wrote a great historical tome that would last for eternity - but those simple notes made my day.
This is why I started the Dew, beyond having a positive showing of the South - to encourage writers from all experiences and levels of advancement to feel comfortable sharing their work.
I think novelists should be able to throw out a pithy, humour filled page long story if they want. I think someone that has never sent any writing out for publication before should listen to their adult child who says they write good stuff. I think a 20 year old who thinks they might just have something should give it a shot.
The Dew is here for everyone, including myself, and I hope to hear from all of you!
Idgie
___________________________________________
__________________________________
Email
dewonthekudzu@gmail.com for information about book reviews or short stories on the site
Special Treat from HarperCollins!
Excerpts! Lots and Lots of Excerpts!
The New Voices in Fiction Sampler: Summer Selection
New York Times bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson presents The
New Voices in Fiction Sampler: Summer Selection. This free
e-book sampler is a curated volume of excerpts from new and upcoming
titles by debut fiction authors you'll want to get familiar with early
on. Download your free copy today: http://harpercollins.
The New Voices in Fiction Sampler: Summer Selection includes:
An Introduction from Joshilyn Jackson and an excerpt from her latest novel, Someone Else's
Love Story, on sale now.
And excerpts from:
The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor
Up at Butternut Lake by Mary McNear
The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi
Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
The From-Aways by CJ Hauser
Thorn Jack by Katherine Harbour
Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert
Don't Try to Find Me by Holly Brown
Ice Shear by M.P. Cooley
The Home Place by Carrie La Seur
Season of the Dragonflies by Sarah Creech
Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson
Up at Butternut Lake by Mary McNear
The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi
Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
The From-Aways by CJ Hauser
Thorn Jack by Katherine Harbour
Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert
Don't Try to Find Me by Holly Brown
Ice Shear by M.P. Cooley
The Home Place by Carrie La Seur
Season of the Dragonflies by Sarah Creech
Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson
(A few of the book covers below)
__________________________________
Email
dewonthekudzu@gmail.com for information about book reviews or short stories on the site
The Winter People
The Winter PeopleJennifer McMahon
On Sale: February 11, 2014
Pages: 336 | ISBN: 978-0-385-53849-7
Idgie Says:
This is one creepy story. It reiterates what The Monkey's Paw and Pet Semetary state - it's not good to bring the dead back to life, they can be "different".
The book jumps back and forth between the past and the present, but the focal point location stays the same. There's magic in the woods and it's not the good kind. The magic works hand in hand with anger, loneliness and revenge.
There was one point in the book, that to me, had too many loose ends to have a satisfactory answer, but again, this is fiction and sometimes you just need to go with the story and enjoy the ride. It's a creepy creepy book and never again will I leave a closet door slightly ajar, or even walk next to a cave opening.
Read it in the daylight. With the doors and windows locked. Perhaps put a chair in front of the closet.
________________________________________________________
Book Description:
West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter, Gertie. Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara's farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister, Fawn. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that suddenly proves perilous when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished without a trace. Searching for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked deeper into the mystery of Sara's fate, she discovers that she's not the only person who's desperately looking for someone that they've lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.
You can read an excerpt HERE:
__________________________________
Email
dewonthekudzu@gmail.com for information about book reviews or short stories on the site
