The third edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival was posted this morning by Ruth at Books, Books and More Books.  My interview with David Ebershoff, author of The 19th Wife and my book review of The 19th Wife was featured along with a bunch of other great reviews.  I encourage you to go take a look.  The next edition will be at The Symposium on November 9th.  If you would like to participate, submit your book review here. And guess who’s hosting on December 21st for your holiday edition?  Me!  Stay tuned!

The Carnival of Children’s Literature was posted this morning by Jill at the Well-Read Child. This is my first time participating in this carnival and my (actually your) interview with Shannon Hale was featured along with a lot of other great reviews and happenings.  I highly encourage you to do some blog hopping.  (Still wondering if their is a button for this carnival)

Don’t forget to get involved in The Bookworms Carnival, an awesome themed reviews carnival which is hosted bi-monthly.  The current edition, Literary Gothic Novels, is up at Becky’s Book Reviews and while I didn’t have anything this time around, I encourage you to check it out.  Editions in November:

Edition 17 hosted by: Dewey at The Hidden Side of a Leaf
Deadline for submission: November 14, 2008
Theme: graphic novels
To submit a post, email: dewpie at gmail dot com

Edition 18 hosted by: Bookopolis
Deadline for submission: November 28, 2008
Theme: Memoirs
To submit a post, email: preferred.stock at gmail dot com

Book Club

Don’t forget A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is October’s fiction book club selection at Rich Women Sisterhood, which I’m excited to be your host and moderator.  This is unlike any book club you’re familiar with because we’ll be discussing the book via a tele-conference call on October 27th at 6:30 MST. That’s TONIGHT!! MONDAY! I’d love to discuss this book with you regardless if you are reading if for the first time or you read it years ago!

If you’re already not a member of Rich Women Sisterhood make sure to register and then register for the book club discussion so I know how many people I have on the call.  Seriously, I’d love to chat!!

Miscellany

• A lot of great reviews and interviews coming up this next week, including Shana Burg, author of A Thousand Never Evers, Donna Gephart, author of As If Being 12 3/4 Isn’t Bad Enough My Mother is Running for President, and a guest post about the effects of breast cancer on a writer with Jennie Nash, author of The Last Beach Bungalow.  Also a book review of The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones

• On Halloween watch for some great Halloween themed reviews including Witches by Roald Dahl, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare and The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury.

• Darfur prizes will be mailed out this week via media mail.  Let me know if you don’t receive them in the next couple of weeks.  And shhh . . .  those other prizes that a few of you won but I haven’t mailed yet (you know who you are).  I haven’t forgotten.  I’m bad, bad, bad!!

• Two upcoming posts on my great book sale finds at our Friends of the Library sale and a recap of my hour spent with Richard Peck, Newbery author of A Year Down Yonder and A Long Way from Chicago (links will take you to my reviews) among his prolific writing career.  One of the best hours I’ve spent with an author.  Ever.
• My library and now reading widget in my sidebar is no longer working and I can’t figure it out.  It stopped fetching information from Amazon and then after I upgraded WordPress I can’t figure out where the library page went.  Sigh . . . So just ignore it for now.

Giveaway Deadline

The end is almost here!!

I can’t believe it! Monday, October 13th, at midnight MST is the last day to put your name in the “virtual hat” for all of the AMAZING books you can win if you participated in Reading & Blogging for Darfur.  If you’d like to be considered for the grand prize, it’s not to late to do that either.  Read the final update and sign up here for the giveaways.  I’ll announce the winners here on the blog Wednesday.

Book Club

Don’t forget A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is October’s fiction book club selection at Rich Women Sisterhood, which I’m excited to be your host and moderator.  This is unlike any book club you’re familiar with because we’ll be discussing the book via a tele-conference call on October 27th at 6:30 MST.  I’d love to discuss this book with you regardless if you are reading if for the first time or you read it years ago!  Find out all the details to participate.

If you’re already not a member of Rich Women Sisterhood make sure to register and then register for the book club discussion so I know how many people I have on the call.  I think it would be so much fun to hear your actual voices, so I hope you consider joining us!

Carnivals

The second edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival was posted this morning at Novel Bloggers.  My review of Tears of the Desert, A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir with Damien Lewis was featured along with a bunch of other great reviews.  I encourage you to go take a look.  The next edition will be on Books Books and More Books on October 26th.  If you would like to participate, submit your book review here. And guess who’s hosting on December 21st for your holiday edition?  Me!  Stay tuned!

Don’t forget to get involved in The Bookworms Carnival, an awesome themed reviews carnival which is hosted bi-monthly.  Click here for details on submitting your reviews.  Becky at Becky’s Book Reviews is our next host!  I hope to be hosting in the near future!

And if you are involved in children’s literature don’t forget The Carnival of Children’s Literature.  I’m participating for the first time in the upcoming carnival hosted by Jill at the Well-Read Child.  Submit your posts here.  Is there a button for this carnival?

I hope everybody’s week is grand!  My parents are now in town from out of state for a week and my in-laws are flying in on a layover tomorrow for breakfast.  I’m currently reading The 19th Wife, which I’m frantically trying to finish for Wednesday’s blog tour.  Tomorrow and Tuesday watch for a review of Janeology with a guest post by the author Karen Harrington.  And after six weeks, don’t even ask how’s potty training is going.

See ya!

Did I mention that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was great?  Because it is.

I read somewhere that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of those books in which nothing happens but absolutely everything happens.  I found that to be so true and so wonderful!  It’s a coming of age story about Francie Nolan as her family struggles with poverty, alcoholism, and the realities of life in the tenements of Brooklyn, New York in the early part of the century.  But it’s about more than just Francie.  It’s a portrait of three generations of an Irish-American family, their hopes and their dreams at a time of life when no thought is given to sending young children down the market for a penny loaf of bread.

Frances is the ultimate strong woman character and I loved every minute that I spent with her.

Popular quotes from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn:

The one tree in Francie’s yard was neither a  pine nor a hemlock.  It had pointed leaves which grew along green swithces which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas.  Some people called it the Tree of Heaven.  No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky.  It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that few out of cement.  It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.   – Chapter 1

Francie is entitled to one cup each meal like the rest. If it makes her feel better to throw it way rather than to drink it, all right. I think it’s good that people like us can waste something once in a while and get the feeling of how it would be have lots of money and not have to worry about scrounging. - Chapter ?

She was all these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day.  It was something that had been into her and her only – the something different from anyone else in the two families.  It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life – the one different tihng such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike. – Chapter 8

Oh, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words!  – Chapter 22.

From that time on, the worldwas hers for the reading.  She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends.  Books became her friends and there was one for every mood .  . . On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.   – Chapter 22.

Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing.  What she wrote was of little consequence.  What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction.

 If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar. – Chapter 26.

Growing up spoiled a lot of things. – Chapter 28

Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman.  Chapter 29

Francie wished adults would stop telling her that. Already the load of thanks in the future was weighing her down. She figured she’d have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them. – Chapter 39

We’re too much alike to understand each other because we don’t even understand our own selves. Papa and I were two different persons and we understood each other. Mama understands Neeley because he’s different from her.  Chapter 44

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere-be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.  Chapter 48

Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you’d give your life to spare them.  Chapter 53

A new tree had grown from the stump and its trunk had grown along the ground until it reached a place where there were no wash lines above it. Then it had started to grow towards the sky again. Annie, the fir tree, that the Nolans had cherished with waterings and manurings, had long since sickened and died. But this tree in the yard–this tree that men chopped down…this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up its stump–this tree had lived! – Chapter 56

Have you read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?  No?  What are you waiting for?

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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is October’s fiction book club selection at Rich Women Sisterhood, which I’m excited to be your host and moderator.  This is unlike any book club you’re familiar with because we’ll be discussing the book via a tele-conference call on October 27th at 6:30 MST.  I’d love to discuss this book with you so now would be a perfect time to read it.  In fact, I’d love you on the call even if you haven’t read it!  Find out all the details to participate.  If you’re already not a member of Rich Women Sisterhood make sure to register and then register for the book club discussion so I know how many people I have on the call.  Can’t wait to talk with you about this one in person!

Rich Women Sisterhood is different because it’s a community of women who have a lot to offer, but could use some help in some other area of their life.  These women don’t want just another social network.  They want an enlightened one.  One that is a positive environment. One that celebrates life with all of its imperfections.  One that transforms and is fulfilling.  It’s a place to live and learn.  And a place to meet other women who want more out of life than just idle chat.  Take the tour to learn more about what Rich Women Sisterhood has to offer you.

Rich Women Sisterhood is all about giving back and we’ve teamed up this past month and focused on the country of Darfur and the burden that genocide is having on women and families.  One dollar from your Rich Women Sisterhood enrollment or monthly membership will be donated to organizations that are helping the women of Darfur.  I’m very excited to have this type of outreach extend beyond this little blog.  So thank you Rich Women Sisterhood for the opportunity to work together on such an important cause! And in other exciting news, Enzie Shahmiri, one of the contributing members of Rich Women Sisterhood is auctioning off a beautiful oil painting of a Sudanese girl to raise funds for the women of Darfur.

And as if it couldn’t get any better, Rich Women Sisterhood features a monthly book club!  Can you guess the moderator?!  Me!  I’m really excited to be asked to host the Rich Women Sisterhood Fiction Book Club!  As if you need another book club right?  Let me tell you why this book club is different.  First off, each month will have a theme.  This month is on women of power, November is on gratitude and December is joy.  The second reason why this book club is different?  You’ll get to participate by telephone!  That’s right!  Just dial into a tele-conference number and join in on the conversation!  Wouldn’t it be so much fun to chat in person with your friends from all across the country while sitting on your couch from home in your jammies?  And if there’s an occasional child screaming in the background, who cares right?  Because in all likelihood it will be one of mine.

I’m personally inviting each of you to join this awesome book club!  Sorry guys, this one is for women only.  Take a moment and register at Rich Women Sisterhood.  There are a few different levels of membership but signing up at the basic level will allow you to participate in the book club with no monthly dues or cost to you.  Second, register for the book club discussion, which will give me an idea of how many people to expect on the call.  Each discussion will take place on the last Monday of the month at 6:30 pm MST and will last no longer than one hour. Third, go see what else Rich Women Sisterhood has to offer you!  You won’t be disappointed.

For the month of October we will be reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith which I just finished and LOVED!  My review will be posted right after this post.  So watch for that.  If you haven’t read this book now would be a perfect time and if you have already read it, I’d love for you to join us on October 27th at 6:30 MST.  When you register, I’ll make sure you receive all the details and telephone number to call into.

Rich Women Sisterhood is generously donating one full membership to Rich Women Sisterhood to one of my readers who is participating in the Blogging and Reading for Darfur campaign.  That’s a $400 value.  Make sure to come back when I open up all the giveaways to put your name in the virtual hat for this one.

And I’d love to know if you register for the book club discussion or have any questions.  I’m really excited to be involved in this new venture!