Cover Love: Judging a Book By Its Cover

I’ll admit it. I am a sucker for a good picture. Whenever I go to a restaurant and open up the menu I am instantly wooed by the dishes that are accompanied by pictures. At BJ’s, the picture of grilled chicken pasta with its vibrant green broccoli and delicate shavings of parmesano reggiano gets me every time.

Book covers sometimes have the same ooh-look-something-shiny! effect on me. Out of the massive volumes of books stacked floor to ceiling in my local bookstore shelves, some always seem to draw me over for a closer look.

Here are a few that have caught my eye in the bookstore lately:



Maybe it’s my marketing background, but although great cover art does not always portend a riveting and well written story, I think its OK to celebrate the publishing companies giving an author a great package to help promote their work.

Giveaways Galore

Just wanted to share a few great book related giveaway opportunities I've come across in the last few days:

• *In the Shadow of Mt. TBR's writer is hosting her first giveaway ever. Visit her site to enter for a chance to win a $20 Borders gift card.

• *Marie at the Boston Bibilophile is giving away an ARC copy of Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen. I just discovered Marie's blog a few weeks ago and I love it. She seems to post several times a week and her reviews are detailed and insightful.
  

• From the Garden Spells cover:

  In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in the smallest of towns, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit. In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.

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• *The audiobook version of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist is available for free download on iTunes this week. Just check the main page for the free download icon.
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A Little Something Humorous

I love when I learn something new from a textbook I'm teaching.

For example, did you know the that word humor actually comes from the Latin word for liquid?* Kudos to you if you're a crackerjack at dead languages, but I had no idea. Apparently the story goes like this: Hundreds of years ago, when people still agreed that the world was flat, it was commonly thought by the noted philosophers of the day that one's personality traits were determined by the balance of the liquids in one's body. Unbalanced liquids = unbalanced personality = strange or odd. So instead of being used to describe things like Sarah Vowell's nephew referring to cemeteries as Halloween parks or Stephen Colbert's version of the news, humorous once referred to someone who was a few sandwiches short of a picnic basket. For example the contestants on Flavor of Love Season 3.


OK, enough with the Latin lessons, but speaking of textbooks, my summer session class starts up next Monday. That means today I am hard at work lesson planning as well as casting aside my hate-affair with talking on the phone to find the best mortgage loan for our new house (Yay! We're getting a new house! Boo! We have to pack. A lot. Quickly.).

I have been in seriously in denial that summer vacation is in fact almost over for me. This is going to put a serious cramp in my new habit of reading until 2am. And lounging around in my pajamas until its time to change into my gym clothes in the afternoon. But in all honesty, I can't complain. I love working with my students and seeing someone who arrived knowing only very basic English progress enough get into the best Hotel Management School in the country. Teaching allows me to work autonomously, be creative and get better every day. And it lets me have a summer vacation in the first place. So, yeah I guess I'm pretty lucky.



*From World Pass: Expanding English Fluency Advanced by S. Stemplski, N. Douglas, J. Morgan and K.L. Johannsen

Lost Girls Book

In book and travel related news (my two favorite subjects), I am thrilled to see that The Lost Girls have landed a book deal (with Harper Collins, no less!) to write about the year they took off to travel the world. If you haven’t already heard the buzz about the Lost Girls, here is a little background, but I highly recommend checking out their blog for yourself to read about their incredible journey and check out their tips if you are dreaming of doing something like this yourself someday: In 2006 best friends Holly, Jen and Amanda traded in the comforts of home and steady jobs in the competitive New York media world for giant backpacks, sometimes seedy hostels, guidebooks and the chance at the adventure of a lifetime.

These are truly girls after my own heart. From the moment I discovered their blog, which happened to be when I was in the throes of planning my own Camino adventure last spring, I was intrigued and inspired. When I wasn’t researching backpacks, lightweight sleeping sacks and a place I could purchase a contraption that enables women to pee standing up in the middle of nowhere, I spent a lot of my spare time reading through their archives.

From the time they touched down in Peru, bought funny looking hats and hiked the Inca Trail right up to the end of their journey in Australia, the girls shared stories and pictures of their adventures on their blog, kindly allowing us to live vicariously through them. I find their writing style savvy, polished and extremely accessible, like hearing the insider point of view from a best girlfriend who also happens to be a kick-ass writer.

I love their spirit and their courage to dare to do what most people only dream about. And of course, the fact that they wrote about it. Jen, Amanda and Holly are truly a testament to the idea that if you want something badly enough, with enough drive, determination and sacrifice, anything is possible. So I wish them the best of luck with the book, which I will anxiously await. I hope they sell millions of copies and inspire many others to take a chance on their own dreams.

Crossing the Finish Line

I did it! I have already spewed out almost all of the words that reside in my head onto my keyboard today in order to cross the 50,000 word finish line, so I'll be brief. Just wanted to share my excitement. I'm really grateful to the New Zealanders over at Kiwi Writers for letting this eager American participate in their challenge. This year a total of 2,635,755 words were written collectively by 143 participants. Sharing my daily progress and knowing there was a whole group of other writing hopefuls clattering away at their keyboards in the winter weather of the southern hemisphere helped me immensely in getting to my daily word goals. As did lemon-lime Gatorade, piles of Oreo cookies and the unfailing support and encouragement from my wonderful husband.

Here's the button with my final word count below:

Book Review: Stern Men by Elizabeth Gilbert

Stern Men by Elizabeth Gilbert

My review

Here is fair warning: If you are looking for a book to fill the hole left by Eat, Pray, Love, reading Stern Men is like trying to shove a square lobster trap into that round hole. It doesn't quite fit the bill.

I really wanted to like this book. After reading Eat, Pray, Love last summer I was eager to read some of Elizabeth Gilbert's earlier works so my first pick was Gilbert's first novel, Stern Men set on two fictional islands off the coast of Maine. I thought it would be a pretty sure bet that I would love almost anything the Elizabeth Gilbert set down on paper, a bet I was disappointed to lose with myself with my mixed feelings on her debut novel.


What this book does well:

You can almost smell the salt air and you can definitely feel the boredom and the generations of animosity between the people of Fort Niles and Courne Haven Islands. Gilbert knows how to paint a gritty and lively picture of the backdrop for her heroine Ruth and the cast of characters around her.


Where it falters:

Descriptions of the history of the islands and the families living there seem to go on for days. They overwhelm the brief pockets of action in the story. It plot ekes forward at a painfully slow pace.



When I listened to Elizabeth Gilbert speak last year at the Book Group Expo in San Jose she cited Charles Dickens as one of her favorite authors and a big influence on her work. His influence was apparent in her stylistic choices for Stern Men. If you like sweeping prose descriptions that go on for fistfulls of pages filling you in on on every detail of backstory, this book may win you over. However, if you are looking forward to something actually happening, you might want to settle in and get comfortable because you might have to wait for a while.

The book does seem to pick up and redeem itself in the last 40 - 50 pages or so, Elizabeth Gilbert's confident and original voice that I'd been waiting for seemed to resurface and shine through to bring the story home.

View all my reviews.

50,000 Words

All right, I’m outing myself today. This month I have been committed to some serious writing, just not in this blog. I was feeling a little tentative (and like I might throw up) about mentioning it before I began. I had some serious doubts and some days when they completely paralyzed me – what if I discovered it was just too hard? What if it was too cumbersome? Too soul sucking? I wasn’t sure what to expect. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to rise to the occasion, but I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t at least try to find out.

So… for the past 21 days I have been pounding away at the keyboard participating in a little something called SoCNoC (Southern Cross Novel Challenge), New Zealand’s answer to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but taking place in June, which happened to be in a more convenient month for me.

The challenge: write a 50,000 word rough draft of a novel in 30 days and live to tell about it.

The idea is not to edit as you go – quantity trumps quality in this round, the editing starts when July rolls around. Well, here I am in week 4 of my challenge and as of today I have written 36,002 words (that’s 63 pages single spaced!) of my required 50,00.

I’ve always harbored the secret desire to write a book. If I don’t at least try, I’ll never know if I can do. And wouldn’t that be a worse failure? (That’s what I try to tell myself every time I’m so sick of writing and just want to quit.)

I let my writing drift off into the background while I let the business of growing up and finding my way in the world take precedence during my college years and beyond. When I did that, I forfeited all of that prime sucking time in my youth that usually needs to come before the brief flashes of brilliance start showing up in the vast haystack of words that I produce. So now is as good a time as any to jump in the mud to

So, like the Camino de Santiago that I am writing about, this month has been a formidable challenge. I am walking out into the wilderness not knowing what to expect. I have a lot more clothes to choose from this time around, but the goal I want to achieve is the same, get to the finish line no matter what obstacles jump in my way.

Wish me luck. I’ll keep you posted – 50, 000 words, June 30, I can see you in the distance.