Friday, May 27, 2011

Weekly Roundup 5/27


This week, I finished The First Husband by Laura Dave. It was a fun, easy read...but it also gave me enough food for thought to imagine a "what if" scenario in my own life. And, I came away with another entry for my quote book. Love this:
"You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life."
--Jane Hirshfield
I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but I love the blog Carrots 'N' Cake, so I was thrilled to get my hands on her new book. It's full of great tips about making good food decisions without depriving yourself...achieving that ideal balance. Plus, it got me back on board with Body Pump, a fantastic class that works every muscle group. I've just been spinning five days a week lately, but I know I need strength training as much as cardio.

For the long weekend, I'm looking forward to finishing The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore and getting started on Summer in the South by Cathy Holton. I also picked up a new cookbook from Southern Living magazine: The Half-Hour Hostess.
Finally, speaking of food, I made these Mini Lasagna Cups for dinner this week...now such a fan of working with wontons, I keep looking for other ways to use them. They were DELICIOUS!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Sisters


"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Sisters
By Nancy Jensen
Publication Date: November 8

From Amazon:

Growing up in hardscrabble Kentucky in the 1920s, with their mother dead and their stepfather an ever-present threat, Bertie Fisher and her older sister Mabel have no one but each other—with perhaps a sweetheart for Bertie waiting in the wings. But on the day that Bertie receives her eighth-grade diploma, good intentions go terribly wrong, setting off a chain of misunderstandings that will send the sisters on separate paths and reverberate through their daughters’ and granddaughters’ lives. From the Depression through World War II and Vietnam, and smaller events both tragic and joyful, Bertie and Mabel forge unexpected identities and raise daughters—and sisters—of their own, learning that love and betrayal are even more complicated than they seem.


What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Family Fang


"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Family Fang
By Kevin Wilson
Publication Date: August 9

From the author's website:


Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as along as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world.

When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance—their magnum opus—whether the kids agree to participate or not. 


What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

"Waiting On" Wednesday: This Beautiful Life

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

This Beautiful Life
By Helen Schulman
Publication Date: August 2

From HarperCollins website:

When the Bergamots move from a comfortable upstate college town to New York City, they’re not quite sure how they’ll adapt—or what to make of the strange new world of well-to-do Manhattan. Soon, though, Richard is consumed by his executive role at a large New York university, and Liz, who has traded in her academic career to oversee the lives of their children, is hectically ferrying young Coco around town. Fifteen-year-old Jake is gratefully taken into the fold by a group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private school. 

But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning after an unchaperoned party and finds an email in his in-box from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe a little proud, and scared—a jumble of adolescent emotion—he forwards the video to a friend, who then for-wards it to a friend. Within hours, it’s gone viral, all over the school, the city, the world.

The ensuing scandal threatens to shatter the Bergamots’ sense of security and identity, and, ultimately, their happiness. They are a good family faced with bad choices, and how they choose to react, individually and at one another’s behest, places everything they hold dear in jeopardy. 


 What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Light from a Distant Star


"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Light from a Distant Star

By Mary McGarry Morris
Publication Date: September 13

From Library Journal:

With her father’s business in trouble and her mother now working, 13-year-old Nellie is the determined caretaker of her little brother. The adults she does encounter, like the thuggish guy who works at her grandfather’s junkyard and the stripper who rents an apartment at the back of the house, upend her life further. Then, a moment of violence lands Nellie in court as witness, where no one believes the awful truth she’s trying to relay. As evidenced by her many novels, from National Book Award nominee Vanished to Oprah pick Songs in Ordinary Time, Morris excels at family dramas with dark and tingly psychological twists.


What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

Want to participate? Grab the logo, post your own WoW entry on your blog, and leave your link below!