BW35: Ladies of Fiction Bookology - Sarah Dunant

Welcome to September and our celebration of Library Card sign up month, Be Kind to Writers and Editors Month, Classical Music Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month.  Don't forget to Be Late for Something Day (9/5), Read a Book Day (9/6), or help someone to read on International literacy Day (9/8).   Remember the fallen on 9/11, honor your grandparents on 9/13, appreciate being a citizen of the U.S. and read the constitution on 9/17. Talk like a pirate on 9/19, celebrate the equinox and think like a hobbit on 9/22, and read a banned or challenged book during Banned Book Week starting September 27th.  Wow, busy month. 

We are also celebrating the writings of our Ladies of Fiction Bookology author, Sarah Dunant, writer of thrillers and historical fiction set during the renaissance.  The british writer recently turned 70 and currently splits her time between London and Florence.  

There are a number of ways to complete the bookology challenge, including but not limited to:

Spell out the author's name - one book per letter from the title on the cover.
Read one or more books written by the author.
Read a book written in the country or time period of the author.

Learn more about Sarah through history you can see and smell, The answers history gives us depend on the questions we ask it’ and fashion and fiction.

~Cheers and happy reading! 

 Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.

In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field paste a link to your post, then check the privacy box and click enter.

BW34: Our Singing Strength by Robert Frost

Our Singing Strength

by 

 Robert Frost

It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm
The flakes could find no landing place to form.
Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,
And still they failed of any lasting hold.
They made no white impression on the black.
They disappeared as if earth sent them back.
Not till from separate flakes they changed at night
To almost strips and tapes of ragged white
Did grass and garden ground confess it snowed,
And all go back to winter but the road.
Next day the scene was piled and puffed and dead.
The grass lay flattened under one great tread.
Borne down until the end almost took root,
The rangey bough anticipated fruit
With snowball cupped in every opening bud.
The road alone maintained itself in mud,
Whatever its secret was of greater heat
From inward fires or brush of passing feet.

In spring more mortal singers than belong
To any one place cover us with song.
Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng;
Some to go further north to Hudson's Bay,
Some that have come too far north back away,
Really a very few to build and stay.
Now was seen how these liked belated snow.
the field had nowhere left for them to go;
They'd soon exhausted all there was in flying;
The trees they'd had enough of with once trying
And setting off their heavy powder load.
They could find nothing open but the road.
So there they let their lives be narrowed in
By thousands the bad weather made akin.
The road became a channel running flocks
Of glossy birds like ripples over rocks.
I drove them under foot in bits of flight
That kept the ground, almost disputing right
Of way with me from apathy of wing,
A talking twitter all they had to sing.
A few I must have driven to despair
Made quick asides, but having done in air
A whir among white branches great and small
As in some too much carven marble hall
Where one false wing beat would have brought down all,
Came tamely back in front of me, the Drover,
To suffer the same driven nightmare over.
One such storm in a lifetime couldn't teach them
That back behind pursuit it couldn't reach them;
None flew behind me to be left alone.

Well, something for a snowstorm to have shown
The country's singing strength thus brought together,
That though repressed and moody with the weather
Was none the less there ready to be freed
And sing the wildflowers up from root and seed.

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Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.

In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field paste a link to your post, then check the privacy box and click enter.

BW33: Pick a book by the cover

Are you ready for a mini challenge?  Me too!  Book covers that are dark and haunting, colorful and bold, a mystery, the challenge it presents intrigues me. Sometimes it the title alone that draws my eye.  Use to be I only looked for books by familiar authors.  Then, several years ago I joined a challenge in which one of the tasks was to pick a book by its cover. The hard part - don't read the blurb and find out what it is about beforehand.   

I discovered the temptation to read the synopsis, then a few pages to see if it drew me in impossible to resist.  Especially in person.  However, I could resist when looking at books online.   Since then I have chosen books a few times using this method and usually end up with something excellent.  Also, I couldn't pick books by authors I've already read. 

Utilizing Amazon's new releases I wondered through their virtual literature and fiction section and the following covers are what drew my eye this time. 

I added C.J. Archer's first book in her Clock and Steel series, Witchmaker's Daughter to my virtual stacks. All her covers are intriguing.  The rest have been added to my wish list. 

So your mission this week is to pick a book by it's cover.  Have fun, be bold, let your eyes feast and see what tickles your fancy.  

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Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.


In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field paste a link to your post, then check the privacy box and click enter.

BW32: 52 Books Bingo - Noir

Our next 52 Books Bingo Category is taking us into the world of Noir where it can be dark and deadly with mysterious and flawed characters, and right and wrong aren't clearly defined.

The genre is defined as "Books made up of stories that contain elements of crime, eroticism, cynicism, moral ambiguity, cruelty, strangeness, and fatalism. The stories are often set in remote areas in urban, rural, and/or out of the way settings or non-distinct settings, like the open road. Noir genre books may or may not include a private eye, detective, or femme fatale. The stories often have an elusive phenomenon or have something that’s just out of reach of the main characters."

The Best Noir Authors

12 Crime Noir Books That Will Have You Reaching for Your Trench Coat

The Rise of Rural Noir 

Guide to Nordic Noir

Noir from around the globe 

Pages of Noir: The Books that Became Film Noir

Hardboiled World: Four Creative Noir Traditions From Around the Globe

"The Noir Genre Helps Mediate between Reality and Fiction”: An Interview with José Salvador Ruiz

Mystery & Detective Novels by Women of Color

Le Chat Noir—Black Cats on the Cover

Have fun exploring the world of Noir.



Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.

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BW31: Ladies of Fiction Bookology - Nalini Singh

Courtesy of Nalini Singh 

Welcome to August and the dog days of Summer and Admit Your Happy Month, Peach Month, and National Picnic month. It's also Romance Awareness Month and a great time to dive into the fictional and not so fictional world of Romance which is vast and varied, from Flufferton Abbey to  Pawsitively cute to the Funny to Outer Space. Or explore the world of Romanticism or contemporary poets or why we love.

One of my favorite paranormal romance authors is Nalini Singh who just happens to be our Ladies of Fiction author of the month.  She was born in 1977 in Fiji and has lived the majority of her life in New Zealand. At the age of 25, she sold her first novel and has gone on to write multi novel paranormal romance series including Psy/Changeling, PsyChaneling/Trinity, and Guild Hunter as well as contemporary romance and thriller novels.  

There are a number of ways to complete the bookology challenge, including but not limited to:

Spell out the author's name - one book per letter from the title on the cover.
Read one or more books written by the author.
Read a book written in the country or time period of the author.

I've read and reread her series several times and am currently reading A Madness of Sunshine: 

"On the rugged West Coast of New Zealand, Golden Cove is more than just a town where people live. The adults are more than neighbors; the children, more than schoolmates. 

That is until one fateful summer—and several vanished bodies—shatters the trust holding Golden Cove together. All that’s left are whispers behind closed doors, broken friendships, and a silent agreement to not look back. But they can’t run from the past forever. 

Eight years later, a beautiful young woman disappears without a trace, and the residents of Golden Cove wonder if their home shelters something far more dangerous than an unforgiving landscape.  

It’s not long before the dark past collides with the haunting present and deadly secrets come to light."

Learn more about Nalini Singh through  khalia Strong's NZ Newsroom interview, Coffeetime Romance, and Entertainment Weekly. 

~Cheers and happy reading! 

Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.

In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field paste a link to your post, then check the privacy box and click enter.