Book Clubs by Elizabeth Long

“Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life” by Elizabeth Long

Book Description:

Book clubs are everywhere these days. And women talk about the clubs they belong to with surprising emotion. But why are the clubs so important to them? And what do the women discuss when they meet? To answer questions like these, Elizabeth Long spent years observing and participating in women’s book clubs and interviewing members from different discussion groups. Far from being an isolated activity, she finds reading for club members to be an active and social pursuit, a crucial way for women to reflect creatively on the meaning of their lives and their place in the social order.

Reading Women by Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley

“Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present (Studies in Book and Print Culture)”

Book Description:

Literary and popular culture has often focused its attention on women readers, particularly since early Victorian times. In Reading Women, an esteemed group of new and established scholars provide a close study of the evolution of the woman reader by examining a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century media, including Antebellum scientific treatises, Victorian paintings, and Oprah Winfrey’s televised book club, as well as the writings of Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Attending especially to what, how, and why women read, Reading Women brings together a rich array of subjects that sheds light on the defining role the woman reader has played in the formation, not only of literary history, but of British and American culture. The contributors break new ground by focusing on the impact representations of women readers have had on understandings of literacy and certain reading practices, the development of books and print culture, and the categorization of texts into high and low cultural forms.

A Book Worth Reading: A Novel by Wells Earl Draughon

Book Description:

Is there anything that can be said about the value of a novel, story or film other than that one likes it? If such factors were made known, writers could use them to write books that readers would not only like better but would feel are worth reading. Do the techniques in books on writing produce such novels?

Are some books good even though we do not like them? Should we force ourselves to like a book because an English professor or a critic insinuates that only people with good taste like that particular book? Do the “arbiters of good taste” have grounds supporting their claims that the books they like are good?

What is the body of knowledge on which such expertise would have to depend? Do they have a right to impose their tastes on students and on the public?

From the Author
This is a book that will anger a lot of vested interests; but for readers of fiction, it is an answer to their most pressing problem: deciding which book to read. By providing ways of deciding for themselves, it liberates readers from sham and from intimidation and allows readers to choose books that work for them. This makes it useful for writers too. And for book reviewers, it should be required reading.

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

Book Description:

In The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, a Book Sense selection, Lewis Buzbee celebrates the unique experience of the bookstore—the smell and touch of books, the joy of getting lost in the deep canyons of shelves, and the silent community of readers. He shares his passion for books, which began with ordering through the Weekly Reader in grade school. Woven throughout is a fascinating historical account of the bookseller trade—from the great Alexandria library to Sylvia Beach’s famous Paris bookstore, Shakespeare & Co. Rich with anecdotes, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is the perfect choice for those who relish the enduring pleasures of spending an afternoon finding just the right book.

Great way to find TBR titles!

Over at my main book blog, SHOULD BE READING, I’ve started a new weekly event called “Friday Finds“. This is a fun blogging meme where you share with others the book titles you found out about throughout the past week! The neat thing is, this has been a great way for me to find new-to-me TBR (to-be-read) titles!

To read more about the FRIDAY FINDS event, and find links to the archived weeks, click [here].

June TBR Finds

I was browsing a bookstore, yesterday, and came up with a slew of titles to add to my TBR list! So, here’s just an overview with links:

The Art Thief – Noah Charney

Cathedral of the Sea – Ildefonso Falcones

The Diplomat’s Wife – Pam Jenoff

The Friends We Keep – Holly Chamberlin

The Golden Tulip – Rosalind Laker

The Infinite Wisdom of Harriet Rose – Diana Janney

Happiness – Will Ferguson

A Hopeless Romantic – Harriet Evans

Lace – Shirley Conran

The Point of Rescue – Sophie Hannah

The Sidewalk Artist – Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk

The Twice Born – Pauline Gedge

The Richest Season by Maryann McFadden

Book Description:

Sometimes you have to leave your life to find yourself again . . .
 
After more than a dozen moves in twenty-five years of marriage, Joanna Harrison is lonely and tired of being a corporate wife. Her children are grown and gone, her husband is more married to his job than to her, and now they’re about to pack up once more. Panicked at the thought of having to start all over again, Joanna commits the first irresponsible act of her life. She runs away to Pawleys Island, South Carolina, a place she’s been to just once.

She finds a job as a live-in companion to Grace Finelli, a widow who has come to the island to fulfill a girlhood dream. Together the two women embark on the most difficult journey of their lives: Joanna struggling for independence, roots, and a future of her own, as her family tugs at her from afar; and Grace, choosing to live the remainder of her life for herself alone, knowing she may never see her children again.

Entwined is Paul Harrison’s story as he loses his wife, his job, and everything that defines him as a man. He takes off on his own journey out west, searching for the answers to all that has gone wrong in his life. One thing remains constant: He wants his wife back.

Joanna, however, is moving farther away from her old life as she joins a group dedicated to rescuing endangered loggerhead turtles, led by a charismatic fisherman unlike anyone she’s ever met.

The Richest Season is a stunning debut about three very different people, each changing their lives when such transformations are usually long over. It will resonate with any woman who’s ever fantasized about leaving home to find herself.

The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

Book Description:

Twenty-seven-year-old Josey Cirrini is sure of three things: winter in her North Carolina hometown is her favorite season, she’s a sorry excuse for a Southern belle, and sweets are best eaten in the privacy of her hidden closet. For while Josey has settled into an uneventful life in her mother’s house, her one consolation is the stockpile of sugary treats and paperback romances she escapes to each night…. Until she finds it harboring none other than local waitress Della Lee Baker, a tough-talking, tenderhearted woman who is one part nemesis—and two parts fairy godmother…

Fleeing a life of bad luck and big mistakes, Della Lee has decided Josey’s clandestine closet is the safest place to crash. In return she’s going to change Josey’s life—because, clearly, it is not the closet of a happy woman. With Della Lee’s tough love, Josey is soon forgoing pecan rolls and caramels, tapping into her startlingly keen feminine instincts, and finding her narrow existence quickly expanding.

Before long, Josey bonds with Chloe Finley, a young woman who makes the best sandwiches in town, is hounded by books that inexplicably appear whenever she needs them, and—most amazing of all—has a close connection to Josey’s longtime crush.

As little by little Josey dares to step outside herself, she discovers a world where the color red has astonishing power, passion can make eggs fry in their cartons, and romance can blossom at any time—even for her. It seems that Della Lee’s work is done, and it’s time for her to move on. But the truth about where she’s going, why she showed up in the first place—and what Chloe has to do with it all—is about to add one more unexpected chapter to Josey’s fast-changing life.

Brimming with warmth, wit, and a sprinkling of magic, here is a spellbinding tale of friendship, love—and the enchanting possibilities of every new day.

Stone Creek by Victoria Lustbader

Book Description:

In the small town of Stone Creek, a random encounter offers two lonely people a chance at happiness.

Danny, a young widower, still grieves for his late wife, but for the sake of his five-year-old son, Caleb, he knows he must move on. Alone in her summer house, Lily has left her workaholic husband, Paul, to his long hours and late nights back in the city. In Stone Creek, she can yearn in solitude for the treasure she’s been denied: a child.

What occurs when Lily and Danny meet is immediate and undeniable—despite Lily being ten years older and married. But ultimately it is little Caleb’s sadness and need that will tip the scales, upsetting a precarious balance between joy and despair, between what cannot happen . . . and what must.

An unforgettable novel of tremendous emotional heft, Stone Creek brilliantly illuminates how the powers of love and loss transform the human heart.

On a Day Like This by Peter Stamm

Book Description:

On a day like any other, Andreas changes his life. When a routine doctor’s visit leads to an unexpected prognosis, a great yearning takes hold of him–but who can tell if it is homesickness or wanderlust; a deathwish or a fresh lease on life? Andreas leaves everything behind–sells his Paris apartment, cuts off all social ties, quits his teaching job, and waves good-bye to his days spent idly sitting in cafés–to look for a woman he loved half a lifetime ago. The monotony of days had been keeping him in check; now he hopes for a miracle and for a new beginning.

Andreas’s travels lead him back to the province of his youth, back to his hometown in Switzerland where he returns to familiar streets, where his brother still lives in their childhood home, and where Fabienne, a woman he was obsessed with in his youth, continues to visit the same lake they once swam in together. Andreas, consumed with longing for his lost love and blinded by the uncertainty of his future, is tormented by the question of what might have been if things had happened differently.

He Loves Me, He Loves Me NOT by Trish Ryan

Book Description:
Trish Ryan was the quintessential successful thirtysomething woman — she had a career as an attorney, a nice car, and a succession of men clamoring for her affection. But despite all her accomplishments, the things by which she defined her life continually left her disappointed, especially when it came to dating. Like the heroines of chick-lit novels and Sex and the City, she couldn’t escape her bad luck with men: men who cheated, who left her, who made her a lesser version of herself. After years of trying everything out there to make love work — new age philosophy, feminist empowerment, myriads of self-help programs — she finally, hesitantly, decided to give God a try. This is Ryan’s story of how her search for the right guy turned into the search for the right God, and (spoiler alert!) how she ended up with the happily-ever-after ending.

We Plan, God Laughs by Sherre Hirsch

Book Description:

The old Yiddish proverb, “We plan, God laughs,” expresses a truth everyone can relate to. At every stage of life we make plans, setting out where we want to go and imagining what we will be like when we have “arrived.” But things have a way of turning out not quite as we hoped or expected.

In WE PLAN, GOD LAUGHS, Sherre Hirsch argues that too often our plans are limited to ones we think up at bedtime, or are devised by our parents, or by what looks good on a résumé. Addressing serious spiritual issues, Hirsch takes readers through ten basics steps for formulating a plan that reflects who we are now and who we want to be—a plan that is alive, organic, and in sync with God.

Hirsch teaches the importance of letting go and recognizing that even the most ordinary life is extraordinary in the eyes of God. She makes no foolish promise that life will turn out as we plan, but shows that with hope, faith, and belief, we can change our lives for the better and make a positive difference in the lives of others.

The Next Thing On My List by Jill Smolinski

From Booklist:
June Parker’s life is meandering along until a freak car accident leaves Marissa, her 24-year-old passenger, dead and June wracked with guilt. June discovers a list Marissa had been keeping of 25 things she wanted to do by the time she turned 25. After a run-in with Marissa’s brother, June resolves to complete the list. Kissing a total stranger and throwing away her scale prove far easier than pitching an idea at work or changing someone’s life. But June approaches the list with aplomb, daring to speak up about being passed over for a manager position, and becoming a Big Sister to a quiet, studious Latina teen named DeeDee. But when June uncovers a secret of DeeDee’s, she realizes changing someone else’s life might involve changing her own as well.

Closer Than Your Skin by Susan D. Hill

Book Description:
If you crave the real experience of God’s presence in your daily life…If you sense there’s more to Christianity than service, study, and superficial spirituality…So many of us have lived in that unspoken longing. In these incredible stories, you’ll see how one person found that God is not always content to wait for us to discover Him amid the clutter of life. Instead, when we simply hold out our hands, He illuminates our ordinary world and gives us new eyes to see.

If you’re ready to go beyond knowing about God
to truly knowing Him…

Here’s where life with God begins.

Is God really like a father who cares about the details of our everyday lives? Then why does He often seem so far away, distant in the moments when we could most use a personal touch from Him?

 

Closer Than Your Skin traces the journey of an ordinary Christian who longed to move beyond the trappings of faith to genuine life with God. Her story reveals how to overcome the obstacles that most often block such intimate connection. Through this remarkable account, you’ll gain tangible insight into what a daily, vibrant companionship with the Creator really feels like once you wake up to the eternal reality all around you.

Looking For God: An Unexpected Journey Through Tattoos, Tofu, and Pronouns by Nancy Ortberg

Book Description:

God is in the details, but sometimes we just overlook him. Nancy Ortberg encourages readers to see God in this very personal, very engaging series of essays that will bring God into focus and allow you to grow deeper in your relationship with him than you had ever imagined.

Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life by Shauna Niequist

Book Description:

A collection of stories and ideas about the life of celebration that God gives us, this book offers a vision of life as a collection of bright and varied glimpses of hope and redemption and celebration, in and among the heartbreak and boredom and broken glass.

Character Makeover by Katie Brazelton

Book Description:

Embark on a forty-day journey with a personal life coach to develop Christlike character. A continuation of Katie Brazelton’s bestselling Pathway to Purpose for Women, this book was created for women of all ages who want a character-rejuvenating experience that will inspire them to live out God’s unique purpose for their life.