Miscellany: Paperless Post Test Drive

I love reading and blogging about books. My other favorite hobby is stationery. I love sending paper invitations for parties. I try to use (use up, I should say) my collection of boxed cards and notes as invitations when I can. For instance, I recently used a set of vintage-looking postcards for a pot luck invitation and some Italian note cards for my mom’s birthday brunch.

But there are only so many minutes in the day! Sometimes sending an electronic invitation is the way to go. So I was more than willing to take Paperless Post up on its offer to make a test run, including their hippest designs from Happy Menocal, John Derian, Jonathan Adler, and my favorite Rifle Paper Co., in exchange for a review here on Rose City Reader.

My law firm hosts an annual "clothes swap" event every fall, so I used my coins to make a the most elaborate clothes-themed invitation I could come up with.

Here’s what it looked like:

I wanted fun, because this is a casual event, that also had fall colors because it is in October. I love the invitation card itself, because the colors are fresh and autumnal, and the images are perfect for a clothes swap. The original design was for a birthday party, but it was easy to customize the words. You can also change the font itself, the size, or the spacing. And for no additional coins, you can add "letterpress" effect, which I did because I think it makes it look more like paper.

I chose a Rifle Paper Co. background to mix in flowers with the same green and persimmon colors with the geometric prints in the clothes:

There were a lot of envelope liners to chose from, but I went with the suggested liner with green stripes:

And, finally, I chose a feminine stamp because I liked it:

The design I picked cost "2 coins" and each add on -- fancy Rifle Paper Co. background, adding an envelope, coordinating envelope liner, fancy stamp -- cost an additional coin, for a total of "6 coins" per invitation. Coins vary in cost depending on how many you buy, from 25 cents per coin to 10 cents per coin.

We sent the invitation to 150 people, so needed 900 coins. The most cost efficient way to do this would be to buy the package of 1,000 coins for $100. So sending these fancy invitations to 150 people would cost $100, which is much less than paper invitations and, of course, we paid nothing for stamps!

I'm not ready to toss my stationery collection in the recycling bin. But I'll definitely use Paperless Post for more invitations, especially for professional events or when the alternative is that I send no invitation at all.

Mailbox Monday: Two Very Different Books About Work

Two nonfiction books about work came my way last week. They are alike in their topic, but quite different in their subject matter and style. The first is a coming of age memoir, the second is a history book.



My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff. This one is the memoir. Rakoff spent a year working as an assistant for J. D. Salinger's literary agent, responding to Salinger's fan mail. She uses that job as the hook for her memoir about starting her career as a writer in the the literary world of New York in the late 1990s.

Even with its eye catching cover, I missed this book when it came out a few years ago. I got my copy this week at a wedding. The bride and groom had the charming idea to give copies of their favorite books to each of the guests as wedding favors. They had a table spread with books and each person chose one that appealed to them. I loved the idea, of course!



Persistent Callings: Seasons of Work and Identity on the Oregon Coast by Joseph E. Taylor III, new from OSU Press. This one is the history book, as you can tell from the title.

It is the history of the Nestucca Valley in western Oregon, from aboriginal times to the present. The Nestucca Valley is a river valley with no incorporated towns and more cows than people. The watershed abuts the Pacific Ocean and the economy long depended on farming, fishing, and logging, before gentrification brought vacation homes and tourism, often to the detriment of the hardest-working residents.

Persistent Callings is a local story that speaks more broadly about the social, economic, and environmental changes to rural life in the American West.

What books came into your house last week?

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Book Beginning: The Melon by Amy Goldman & Listening at Lookout Creek by Gretel Van Wieren

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I have two this week because I have so many new books stacked on my desk I need to start doing some double-features!

The taste of melons at their peak, oozing honey, is incomparable, as is the air, sweet-smelling with muskmellon on an August night.

-- The Melon by Amy Goldman. Goldman is an author, gardener, and advocate for heirloom seeds, fruits, and vegetables. Her newest book, The Melon, is an expanded revamp of her earlier melon book and is fabulously luscious. Top pick for gardener gift giving.

There is spirit to these woods, if you take the time to listen.

-- Listening at Lookout Creek: Nature in Spiritual Practice by Gretel Van Wieren, new from OSU Press. Van Wieren retreated to the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon’s western Cascade Mountains to conduct the "spiritual experiment" needed to reconnect with the natural world.

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up. Please find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING




TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Melon:

Once a favorite of French market gardeners, Prescott Find Blanc is now a favorite of mine. This ethereal, deeply furrowed , puffy-looking melon reminds me of dough rising.

From Listening at Lookout Creek:

Ecological change does influence inner change. And how we think about this change, how we choose to name it and then engage it, or not, shapes our consciousness, our very being.

Favorite Author: Ian Rankin

John Rebus is the kind of curmudgeon cop I love for the hero of a detective series. He’s a loner, he drinks too much, eats bad food, is out of touch with popular culture, and is generally grouchy. He’s me if I were a police detective.

That he works in Edinburgh, one of my favorite cities, makes Ian Rankin’s long-running Rebus series, and it’s Malcolm Fox tie-in, some of my favorite mystery novels out there.

Here is a list of all of Ian Rankin’s books. I’m actively trying to get through the Rebus series. I started the Fox series but when they dovetailed with the Rebus books, I put them on hold so I could catch up. I may get to the other novels someday. I will most likely not get to the graphic novel, stage play, or other one-offs.

Those I have read are in red; those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

If you are an Ian Rankin fan, please feel free to leave links to related posts in a comment below and I will add your link in the section below.

JOHN REBUS AND MALCOLM FOX BOOKS

Knots and Crosses (1987)

Hide and Seek (1991)

Tooth and Nail (1992)

A Good Hanging (short stories)

Strip Jack (1992)

The Black Book (1993)

Mortal Causes (1994)

Let it Bleed (1994)

Black and Blue (1997)

The Hanging Garden (1998)

Dead Souls (1999)

Set in Darkness (2000)

The Falls (2001)

Resurrection Men (2002)

A Question of Blood (2003)

Fleshmarket Alley (called Fleshmarket Close in the UK edition) (2004)

The Naming of the Dead (2006)

Exit Music (2007)

The Complaints (Fox only)

The Impossible Dead (Fox only)

Standing in Another Man's Grave (Rebus & Fox) (2012)

Saints of the Shadow Bible (Rebus & Fox) (2013)

The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Stories (2014)

Even Dogs in the Wild (Rebus & Fox) (2015)

Rather Be the Devil (Rebus & Fox) (2016)

In a House of Lies (2018)

OTHER BOOKS

The Flood (1986)

Watchman (1988)

Westwind (1990)

Witch Hunt (writing as Jack Harvey) (1993)

Bleeding Hearts (writing as Jack Harvey) (1994)

Blood Hunt (writing as Jack Harvey) (1995)

Beggars Banquet (short stories, seven Rebus and 14 others) (2002)

Rebus's Scotland: A Personal Journey (nonfiction) (2005)

The Complete Short Stories (omnibus: A Good Hanging & Other Stories and Beggar's Banquet plus one new story, "Atonement") (2005)

Doors Open (2008)

A Cool Head (a "Quick Reads") (2009)

Dark Entries (a graphic novel) (2009)

Dark Road (stage play written with Mark Thompson) (2014)

The Travelling Companion (short story) (2016)

OTHER RANKIN FANS

If you have Rankin-related posts that you would like listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

Last updated on September 21, 2019.

Teaser Tuesday: The Woman in the Park by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist

It was amazing how much of a difference seeing Lawrence made, and not simply in the ways she would have expected. . . . She founded a wonderful new thrill to keep so vast a secret from her friend; Laura's natural inquisitiveness only made it that much more of a challenge, as though getting through an interview with her might somehow prepare Sarah for the more daunting task of concealing the affair from her husband and her therapist. 

– The Woman in the Park by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist. This psychological thriller finds a Manhattan wife and mother at the center of a woman's disappearance from the park, but nothing is as it seems.

Co-author Tullan Holmqvist wrote about what it what like to collaborate with another writer on a novel, here on Holmqvist's author's blog.

The Woman in the Park is published by Beaufort Books, an independent publisher of fiction and non-fiction.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION

When Manhattanite Sarah Rock meets a mysterious and handsome stranger in the park, she is drawn to him. Sarah wants to get away from her daily routine, her cheating husband and his crazy mistress, her frequent sessions with her heartless therapist, and her moody children.

But nothing is as it seems. Her life begins to unravel when a woman from the park goes missing and Sarah becomes the prime suspect in the woman’s disappearance. Her lover is nowhere to be found, her husband is suspicious of her, and her therapist is talking to the police.

With no one to trust, Sarah must face her inner demons and uncover the truth to prove her innocence.

A thriller that questions what is real. With its shocking twists, secrets, and lies, The Woman in the Park will leave readers breathless.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday: Three New Books by Women Writers

What books came into your house last week? I got three new books, one that is out already and two that will launch in the next weeks:



Birds of Wonder by Cynthia Robinson. This debut novel is a murder mystery and complex family story set in upstate New York. It starts when a teacher discovers the body of her dead student and calls the police to solve the crime -- the police detective being her own daughter. It looks amazing!



A Place in the World by Amy Maroney. This is the last book in Maroney's Miramonde series of historical novels about a female artist in the 1500s and the modern art historian tracking her down. The book launches on September 26.

The Miramonde series starts with The Girl from Oto, continues with Mira's Way, includes a preqel novella called The Promise, and concludes with A Place in the World.

Read my interview with Amy Maroney about her series, female artists, and what drew her to historical fiction.



This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story by Jackie Shannon Hollis, a new memoir will be available October 1 from Forest Avenue Press, by a woman who made the complicated decision not to have children when she married a man who did not want kids.

For those in the Portland area, the official book launch for This Particular Happiness is October 4, 2019 at Powell's City of Books from 7:30 - 9:00 pm. Laura Stanfill, the delightful and inspiring leader of Forest Avenue Press, will be on hand to introduce Jackie and her book.

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Book Notes: Last, Now, Next - What I'm Reading in September

I've enjoyed playing around with Instagram book posts lately. Instagram inspires me to take more pictures, obviously, and the bookstagrammers start discussions or post hashtag challenges that give me ideas for blog posts and the creative energy to sit down and write them.

This morning I had fun with a hashtag challenge on Instagram called #lastnownextread where participants list the book they just finished, the book they are currently reading, and the book they plan to read next.

My last read was The Little Book of Lykke: The Danish Search for the World's Happiest People by Meik Wiking. I thought it was interesting, approached important ideas in a creative way, and was more substantive than his earlier book, The Little Book of Hygge, which I adore. I didn't agree with all his conclusions. For instance, while some programs might work in Denmark, I don't know that they would transfer or scale up for other countries. But I like that he is thinking about and discussing what makes people happy and how to achieve that on a broad scale. It’s a book I’d like to discuss with people face to face, which would be a very lykke thing to do.

My current read is The Small Room by May Sarton. I’m enjoying this one a lot because I love “campus novels” and middlebrow, Midcentury fiction. This is set in a women’s college in upstate New York, contemporaneous to when it was published in 1961. So this one is my exact cup of tea! I keep this list of campus novels if others share my enjoyment for Ivy Tower fiction.

My next read is Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. I read this in college, and I’m slowly, in fits and starts, rereading some of the classics I read so long ago.

The three are stacked on one of my favorite needlepoint pillows because fall is here and I dug out that pillow to toss on the living room sofa.

So, what are your three? Feel free to share.

Book Beginning: Generation Share: The Change Makers Building the Sharing Economy by Benita Matofska & Sophie Sheinwald

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

What is the sharing economy? What does sharing mean to you?

Generation Share: The Change Makers Building the Sharing Economy by Benita Matofska and Sophie Sheinwald, a new release from Policy Press. Interviews and photos highlighting 200 case studies of the new worldwide sharing movement.

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week. Sorry I didn't get the post up early this week! My law partner and I had our office party yesterday evening to celebrate her becoming a partner, changing our firm name to Dumas & Vaughn, and our firm's fifth anniversary. We were setting up for the party and I forgot to post!

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up. Please find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

In this 24/7, on-demand, screen-obsessed era, we are exposed to more information in one day than our predecessors experienced in a lifetime. For Gen Z, the Sharing Economy is the economy -- as much a part of them as they are of it and so innate they may not realize it.

It's hard to know from this snippet where this idea is going. I can imagine, but don't know, how modern technology and sharing fit together.

While I read on to figure it out, I'll share this picture of me and my law partner Ashley Vaughn, from our party last night. I hope you share your Book Beginnings and Friday 56 teasers!

Teaser Tuesday: Winded: A Memoir in Four Stages by Dawn Newton

I didn't like to tell strangers who learned about my cancer that I was a non-smoker. Dealing with strangers was always tricky.

– Winded: A Memoir in Four Stages by Dawn Newton. In her new memoir, Dawn Newton writes about living life to the fullest after she was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer.

Winded is available for pre-order. It releases on October 1, 2019 from Apprentice House Press, the nation's first entirely student-managed publishing house, located at Loyola University Maryland.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

When Dawn Newton, an adjunct professor and mother of three, gets a terminal lung cancer diagnosis, the path forward appears rutted. The Great Recession has left her exhausted and juggling multiple jobs. Then she learns of her cancer's mutation. She can take a pill each day to live longer.

Fifteen months into survival, she feels overwhelmed by the effort of staying alive. She longs to embrace moments and display gratitude yet can't find words to articulate her needs. Regardless of any control she exerts over her body's frailties, her emotional life asserts its own disruptive trajectory. Even as she labors to anchor herself to the love of family, she faces a blasphemous question: "If no cure is available, and death lurks around the next corner, is more time really worth it?"

In Winded, Newton describes life with terminal disease, exploring dark crevices of the psyche as she tries to assess the value of a life. The final lessons she imparts to her family may not be about resilience but about illuminating vulnerability and embracing the imperfect.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday: Books with Friendly Connections

I'm often inspired to buy a book or borrow it from the library because I see it on social media. But I realize that my real life friends also add to my sagging TBR shelves. Do your friends influence what book you buy and read?

I cleaned up my office this weekend (a seismic event for me) and realized I've gathered a random assortment of books in the last couple of weeks, all here in my life because of some connection with a friend. In some cases, the connection was direct, in some it was attenuated, but all of these books were here because of a friend.

Going clockwise:

Sunnylands: America’s Midcentury Masterpiece by Janice Lyle. I’ve had my eye on this gorgeous coffee table book ever since my friend showed it to me at her house a few months ago. It will always remind me of her.

The Compleat Squash: A Passionate Grower’s Guide to Pumpkins, Squashes, and Gourds by Amy Goldman. My book publicist friend Mary Bisbee-Beek give me a review copy of Goldman’s luscious new book, The Melon, and I love it so much I had to go looking for all of Goldman’s earlier books.

A Better Man and Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny. The only friend connection here is that my neighbor (and friend) recently brought me a couple of books while he was out filling Little Free Libraries, which reminded me to take a bunch of my books to our closest neighborhood LFL, where I found these two perfect copies of Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries that I have not read yet.

Choosing Diversity by Lance Izumi. A friend of mine introduced me to Lance because of my volunteer work for the Children's Scholarship Fund of Oregon, which provides scholarships for low-income families, elementary through high school, and is run out of the Cascade Policy Institute where I sit on on the board. Lance gave me a copy of his book when we met for lunch last week.

Culture Counts: Faith & Feeling in a World Besieged by Roger Scruton. A while back, my friend Steve Hayward posted a picture on Facebook of himself with Sir Roger Scruton. So when I saw this cover, I was curious to read the book. What a mug!

And as I was drafting this post, I got another friendly book surprise through the mail slot on my office door:

The Preserve by Steve Anderson. Set in 1948 in the US Territory of Hawaii, a WWII vet seeks to cure his combat fatigue at a mysterious facility called the Preserve, but gets pulled in on a deadly plot that runs all the way to General MacArthur.

Steve writes WWII thrillers that are are exciting, a little quirky, and based on true events. I'd read them even if Steve and I weren't friends because the stories are so good! I was just lucky to get my friends' copy early.

The Preserve launches this week and is available for pre-order. For Portlanders, the launch event for The Preserve is Thursday at Powell's Books on Hawthorne at 7:30.

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Book Beginning: The Woman in the Park by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

When the doorbell rang, neither of them reacted right away.

– The Woman in the Park by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist. This short, fast-paced thriller finds Sarah Rock the prime suspect in a woman's disappearance and her fancy Manhattan life falling apart. It's an exciting story of love and madness.

The Woman in the Park is published by Beaufort Books and is available now. Teresa Sorkin is a television producer. Tullan Holqvist is an investigator, writer, and actor. This is their first novel.

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up. Please find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Sorry for the lack of linky! I’m traveling for work without my laptop and can’t figure out how to do it on my phone. Please leave your link in a comment this week.




TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

The teacher was unlike most she had encountered, with their forced-calm voices and thinly veiled judgments. He liked to dispense droplets of a dour sort of wisdom in between his more usual litany of sarcastic remarks and inappropriate jokes.

Mailbox Monday: Brené Brown and Portland Noir

I got two very different books last week:



The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brené Brown.

This time of year when the season starts to change and autumn is in the air, I always get in a back-to-school, self-improving mood. I undertake organization projects, read self-help books, tidy the house. And, of course, start planning for the holidays.

I’m new to the Brené Brown bandwagon, having just read my first book of hers, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. I really liked what she had to say -- as so many people do -- and want to read more of her books. People seem to like this Gifts of Imperfection book a lot, so I got it.



Frank's Revenge: Albina After Dark by Don DuPay, author of Behind the Badge: A Portland Police Memoir. Frank's Revenge is a new novel, a neo-noir thriller set in Portland, written by a former homicide detective. It looks like a great read!

DuPay's book caught my eye because it has a blurb on the front cover by Phil Stanford, my favorite former Oregonian newspaper columnist and author of a book I loved, Portland Confidential: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Rose City and, more recently, Rose City Vice: Portland in the 70's - Dirty Cops and Dirty Robbers.

What books came into your house last week?

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts. You can also read more about Books That Caught Our Eye from the week before.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Book Beginning: Winded: A Memoir in Four Stages by Dawn Newton

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The wind from Hurricane Sandy swept into Michigan and onto the campus of Oakland University, a college nestled within a suburb of Detroit.

– Winded: A Memoir in Four Stages by Dawn Newton. In this new memoir, Newton writes about living with lung cancer for six years with the help of an unexpected prescription drug. She writes about her fears and her family and living life to the fullest no matter what.

Winded is published by Apprentice House Press, a student-managed book publisher at Loyola University Maryland. It comes out October 1, 2019 and is available for pre-order.

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up. Please find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING




TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From our mother we learn to sing by ear at an early age, before we knew about notes. She'd grown up in a large family with talented singers, and although her older sister, my aunt Angie, knew how to play the piano, my mother did not.

Favorite Author: Julia Spencer-Fleming

Julia Spencer-Fleming published In the Bleak Midwinter, the first book in her Clare Fergusson series, in 2002. Fergusson is a former army pilot, now Episcopalian priest and the first female priest at St. Albans in the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill. (Kill is the old Dutch word for river, but it sounds spooky, doesn't it?)

Now up to eight books with another due in 2020, the series is called the Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne series, as Clare’s police chief love interest gets double billing. Electricity sparked between pastor and cop from the get go. While Episcopalian priests can date and marry, they are definitely not supposed to date married men, especially high profile citizens like the police chief. The development of their relationship is one of the best parts of the series.

Spencer-Fleming has won several awards for her books and was nominated at least once for the coveted Edgar. She deserves the acclaim. This is one of the best-written, most intelligent mystery series going. The plots are creative and intricate. The pacing is solid, with exciting scenes that are actually exciting. The characters are complex -- Fergusson is one of the most interesting sleuths out solving mysteries. Spencer-Fleming does a masterful job of having Clare maintain her spiritual role while wrestling with human issues.

A big difficulty with amateur sleuth series is how to get the amateur sleuth involved in so many murder investigations. Spencer-Fleming handles this well, usually by having Fergusson face a minor problem in the beginning -- something a small town priest could believably have to deal with -- and then only throwing in the dead body after Fergusson is well involved. There are enough "stay out of this; I told you to wait in the car" conversations with Van Alstyne as necessary, but not annoyingly many.

I've read the first seven. All the titles are the names of hymns:

In the Bleak Midwinter (2002)

A Fountain Filled With Blood (2003)

Out of the Deep I Cry (2004)

To Darkness and to Death (2005) (reviewed here)

All Mortal Flesh (2007) (reviewed here)

I Shall Not Want (2008)

One Was a Soldier (2011) (reviewed here)

Through the Evil Days (2013)

Hid from Our Eyes (2020 - available for pre-order only)

NOTES

Last updated on September 2, 2019.

OTHER FANS

If you have reviews of Julia Spencer-Fleming's books, or other posts about this author, and would like them listed here, please leave comments with a links and I will add them here.

Teaser Tuesday: Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

Crystal was hovering around thirty-nine years old and it took a lot of work to stay in this holding pattern. She was a construction, made from artificial materials – the acrylic nails, the silicone breasts, the polymer eyelashes.

– Big Sky by Kate Atkinson, the new Jackson Brodie novel. This is the fifth in Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series, my favorite mystery series.

I've only just started this one. I'm reading it with my ears because my library has it available on Overdrive for instant download with no wait list (unbelievable). And -- what a treat -- it is read by Jason Isaacs, the cutie patootie who plays Jackson Brodie in Case Histories, the tv adaptation of the first three books.

All the Brodie books have involved several disparate stories that more or less come together. Like with her literary fiction, Atkinson's droll commentary and crackling wit make every page a delight. These are in no way conventional mysteries. They are stories about people facing conflict, struggling with relationships, finding their place, and trying to understand life. That they have a few dead bodies thrown in make them "mysteries," but they are literature.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It's picturesque, but there's something darker lurking behind the scenes.

Jackson's current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network-and back across the path of his old friend Reggie. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking novel by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Labor Day Monday

Happy Labor Day! At least for those celebrating this long holiday weekend.

Indie authors and publishers work mighty hard to get their books into the hands of readers, so this stack of new releases from small presses is well-suited for Labor Day.

Here’s the stack (my souvenir mug from Positano has nothing to go with the theme):

Celibate by Maria Giura, a memoir by a woman who fell in love with a priest only to find her true calling. From Apprentice House Press, a student-managed book publisher at Loyola University Maryland.

Listening at Lookout Creek: Nature in Spiritual Practice by Gretel Van Wieren, another memoir, this one by a woman who retreats to an Oregon forest to try to recapture her sense of deep connection with the natural world, a feeling she thought she had lost while living a super busy, high-tech life with kids. From OSU Press at Oregon State University.

The Woman in the Park by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist, a new “domestic thriller” that is getting a bit of buzz. From Beaufort Books in New York City.

Winded: A Memoir in Four Stages by Dawn Newton, which, as the title suggests, is about the author’s cancer fight and her final gift to her family. Also from Apprentice House Books.

The Melon by Amy Goldman, photos by Victor Schrager, a luscious new book celebrating all thing melonicious. It is part garden book, part seed-saver primer, part food porn, and all gorgeous. From City Point Press.

Generation Share: The Change-Makers Building the Sharing Economy by Benita Matofska and Sophie Sheinwald, featuring interviews and photos of 200 people at the forefront of the sharing movement. From Policy Press.

What new books came into your house last week?

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Book Review: Trove by Sandra A. Miller

Trove: A Woman's Search for Truth and Buried Treasure by Sandra A. Miller, from Brown Paper Press

As a child, Sandra A. Miller gathered treasure. Stray buttons, pretty stones, even paper clips caught her magpie eye and found their way to her shoebox treasure chests. She carried her scavenger hunting habits into adulthood, finding herself one day, sometime in her forties, digging for pirate treasure in Brooklyn with a sexy man named David.

But Trove is memoir, not fiction. So reality nudges in to explain that the “pirate treasure” was buried by a couple of entrepreneurial puppeteers as a marketing stunt. Miller lives in Boston, a five-hour drive from Brooklyn, where her two kids wonder why their mom is not home with them. And her husband is getting exasperated with her buddy David now that this armchair treasure hunt has turned into an actual road trip. Is she searching for buried treasure or running away?

Miller explores these ideas and how her search for treasure has always been “an instinct born of yearning.” Her parents were volatile, often angry with each other and their two daughters, although always happy and popular with outsiders. Her father died when she was 19, before she felt a connection between them. Now Miller’s elderly mother is reaching her end, having never connected with Miller’s children or shown Miller motherly love.

Miller summed up her feelings like this:

Maybe it had to do with growing up lonely in a middle-class, Catholic family, being a fiery young girl forced to endure a home life as empty as that hollowed-out tree stump, with no promise of treasure underneath. And maybe that girl grew into a passionate woman who still obsessively believed her only chance for happiness was buried in some unknowable place.

The narrative flows effortlessly with a casual style that is introspective but never maudlin. Just when it was starting to feel exasperating that she didn’t tell her husband exactly what was on her mind, Miller brought her story to a conclusion most satisfyingly, even with a bit of a twist.

All in all, Trove is an excellent memoir. It would make a good book club pick. I would recommend it in particular for sandwich generation readers, women facing middle age, and those dealing with aging parents.


NOTES

This review will appear in the October 2019 edition of Midwest Book Review.