Blog Tour: The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter

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Blog Tour: The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan

When Trish from TLC Book Tours asked me if I'd be interested in participating in a blog tour of John Grogan's book, The Longest Trip Home, I couldn't say "yes!!" any faster or louder. I'd read Grogan's wonderful memoir last year and had already reviewed it for the blog, and I loved having an excuse to re-read the book. You can see my review from last year by clicking here. Kristen at BookNAround has written up a terrific synopsis in her review, and since she's the first stop on the tour, I won't repeat all her great work!

John Grogan's memoir alternates between incredibly touching and laugh out loud funny, it reminded me so much of my own childhood. And that's the wonderful thing about this book. Really, about all Grogan and I have in common is that we were born the same year. I'm a farm kid from western Montana, he was a kid from the 'burbs of Detroit. He was from a wildly devout Catholic family, and I grew up in a Mormon family. Yet, as a reader, I felt connected to this man's family and his childhood. I would be reminded reading about his own childhood antics, of the things my brother and sister and I would get into.

Living on a farm, we had milk cows and also a few hundred chickens. My parents sold the eggs from the chicken's to a supermarket in a larger city about 50 miles away once a week. When the chickens would stop laying eggs that could be sold, my dad would turn them out of the cages and let them live out the rest of their lives with free run of the farm. They would continue to lay eggs in unlikely places, often misshapen or small and my older brother and sister and I would find them and stash them away in one of the outbuildings until they reached a nice level of stinky rotten-ness. Then, we would have an all-out war, "rotten egg fight". Of course, being the youngest, it was always them against me, and I always got the shed without the roof as my "fort" and since I was only 6 years old, I couldn't lob an egg all the way across the yard to their "fort" if my life depended on it. I pretty much always ended up covered in stinky rotten eggs, and they were the victors once more.

This all ended the year my cousin, Jack arrived to spend the summer with us. Jack was 7 years older than me, (2 years older than my brother) and he became my "knight in shining armor". He could nail my siblings through a knothole in the siding at 50 yards with a rotten egg. Oh, I spent many more summers covered in stinky rotten egg, but that summer...I was queen of the farm.

It's wonderful how a book about someone else's childhood can lead us down our own memory lane, and that is one of the special things about this book. Pick up a copy of The Longest Trip Home, I didn't think it was possible for John Grogan to top Marley and Me, but I may have loved this book even more!!

You can see John Grogan's website here, and you might want to take a look at the "Share your Stories" tab. After you read The Longest Trip Home, if you're feeling as nostalgic as I did, you may have a great childhood story that you can contribute to the site!

You can check out other stops on this blog tour for the next couple of weeks, and I'm sure you'll really enjoy all the perspectives of these wonderful bloggers.

Monday, October 19th: BookNAround
Thursday, October 22nd: Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books
Monday, October 26th: Book Club Classics
Tuesday, October 27th: Readaholic
Tuesday, November 3rd: Bookstack
Thursday, November 5th: The Book Zombie
Monday, November 9th: The 3 R’s: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness
Thursday, November 12th: Cozy Little House
Tuesday, November 17th: Starting Fresh
Date TBD: The Book Lady’s Blog

And if you're curious about what a "professional" reviewer thought about this wonderful book, you might check out the New York Times review here. Little hint--Janet Maslin loves it just as much as I do, but she's a whole heck of a lot more articulate in explaining why!

Thanks much to Trish for including me in the blog tour for this terrific book. My original review was based on a copy of the book I received from the publisher.

Review: A Deadly Habit by Andrea Sisco

In Andrea Sisco’s debut novel, A Deadly Habit, Penelope Santucci is a probation officer with a penchant for trouble. She can’t seem to help it; trouble just finds Pen, no matter where she is. As a child Pen, the product of a Protestant Italian home in a neighborhood of Polish Catholics, always fantasized about becoming a Catholic nun. Pen would dress in bed sheets and roller skate to the local parish, where she would enter the confessional of Father Kopecky, where she would claim outrageous sins that only an 8 year old can imagine. Fast-forward 19 years, and sure enough, Pen is once again in Father Kopecky’s confessional. But this time she’s confessing about a murder, one she didn’t commit, but knows she’ll be the police’s prime suspect.

Penelope manages to convince Father Kopecky and a nun to help her to clear her name. Along the way, she snags herself a handsome, hunky attorney who tries valiantly to keep her out of trouble. Can Penelope clear her name, solve the murder, stop the murderous thugs who think she has their money and still avoid returning her mom’s calls?

It’s almost impossible not to love Penelope Santucci. She’s just so…well…

He poured coffee from a old, chipped pot. “You haven’t changed Penelo… Pen.”
Reaching for the cup he offered, I said, “No, I always wanted to be blond, tall and willowy, but five-two is a stretch and I guess I’m destined to be a brunette who’s on the cuddly side of perfect.”

How can you not just love a woman like that…the cuddly side of perfect….*giggle….

And even better, when confronted with a tall, thin, snooty woman claiming to be having an affair with Pen’s soon to be ex, she handles the confrontation with her typical grace and aplomb.

…Instead I stood tall, at least as tall as I could muster given my vertically challenged status, threw my shoulders back, and showed my large, full, perky bosoms. We looked like two little boys playing “mine’s bigger than yours.”

The oddest thing about this book is that apparently Pen and I are sisters. I don’t remember having a sister named Pen growing up, but we seem to have the same mom. (Mom, if you read this, I’m just kidding….really…)

When trying to convince her sister to help her with a particularly sticky situation, Pen resorts to the mom threat to compel her assistance.

The you’ll-have-to-be-responsible-for-Ma threat worked. Germaine loved Ma but she’d face the devil himself in order to avoid frequent and long periods of contact with her.

(Mom…don’t call…I’m just joking…really…..love you mom…)

Okay..I’ll stop with the quoting already. But it’s hard to, the book is chock full of some pretty funny stuff. Andrea Sisco is off to a great start, the plot was just different enough to stand out, the characters are this side of wacky, lovable, funny and human, and if occasionally, the dialogue feels just a wee little bit stilted, that’s okay. This is a debut novel by an author that occasionally strives for fluidity. And as her writing proceeds, I’m certain that this talented writer will find her skills refined and polished. I’m looking forward to many more novels by Andrea Sisco.

(Review copy provided by the author.)

My rating:

Review: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Nora Grey is a nice girl, bright and hard working. Her mother travels frequently for work in a struggle to keep their home after her father’s death, and Nora; responsible, steady Nora does all she can to make sure her mom doesn’t worry too much. Then Nora is partnered with Patch in a school project. Mysterious and borderline creepy, Nora just wants to stay the heck away from him, but he seems to be everywhere, watching her. The sparks between Patch and Nora are undeniable, the shocking truth of Patch’s past is uncovered and all that remains for them to discover is, “how much will they sacrifice for the other?”

When I received a copy of Becca Fitzpatrick’s new novel, Hush, Hush to review from the publisher, I was happy to give it to my daughter to read first. She is 15 years old, and, like all 15-year-old girls, thinks that Twilight rocks and Edward is just dreamy. In a prominent position in her bedroom is a large poster-sized picture of Edward, in all his brooding magnificence. All of which elicits enough eye rolling on my part to practically make me dizzy. I never made it past the first book in the Twilight series, I think Bella is an annoying angst-y twit, Edward is a wuss, and Jacob needs a haircut. (Sparkly vampires….sheesh…) All I wanted was to find a book we could find some common ground on, a book we’d both like. Imagine my surprise when she completed the book and announced to the family, “Hush, Hush was awesome…better than Twilight!”

And she’s right! Hush, Hush is awesome and it was just soooo much better than Twilight. (Of course to my perspective, that wouldn’t take much!) We agree that this book should be made into a movie, and we’re really hoping for a sequel, although it wouldn’t be necessary. The book stands on it’s own and doesn’t leave us readers hanging.

Something I really enjoyed about the book was how normal the teens in the book were. Nora was the spitting image of my own daughter, and her wacky friend Vee was just like her best friend. The kids were all good kids, making iffy choices at times, but still good kids. It was refreshing from the “mom” perspective to read a book where the author not only seems to understand teens, but also, actually likes them.

Both my daughter and myself hope that Becca Fitzpatrick is hard at work writing another novel. We can’t wait to read many more books by this creative and inventive author. And, as an aside, this book has taken care of a good sized chunk of my Christmas list…all the teens on my list will be getting a copy of Hush, Hush this year!!

My rating:

In spite of our best intentions....

Sometimes we just fall behind!!

And boy, did I fall behind. Life frequently conspires against us in accomplishing all we want to do. I doubt I'll be able to go back to daily posting for a while. The best way to explain my absence is simply say, "Man plans, God laughs."

I hope everyone hasn't given up on me. It's good to be back!