Dot – Saturday Story Spotlight

Sep 032011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Dot by Patricia Intriago
Published by Margaret Ferguson Books, an imprint of Macmillan

Patricia Intriago’s Dot is a stark, sparse study in opposites. There are dots that are up and down, happy and sad, yummy and taste bad. Having the illustrations consist of little more than dots set against a solid background – most often black dots on white – means that there is little to distract from the attributes that define each set of dots. Daniel is particularly taken with the dots that are yummy and taste bad. Each of the two appears to have a bite taken out of it, but the bad-tasting dot has its missing piece next to it on the page, as if someone tasted it and then spit it out. Every time Daniel sees Dot, he grabs the book from my hand and starts flipping through the pages asking, “where yummy one?”

Although it isn’t as ornately illustrated as most of the picture books we read, Dot is attention-grabbing in its simplicity, as evidenced by the fact that Daniel latched onto one of the sets of dots almost immediately, after only one or two reads. We are enjoying Dot very much.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny – Audiobook Spotlight

Sep 022011

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny, narrated by Ralph Cosham
Published in audio by Macmillan Audio, published in print by Minotaur Books, both imprints of Macmillan

In the fall of 2009, I discovered the amazing crime fiction blog, Jen’s Book Thoughts. If you don’t know Jen’s blog and you ever read (or listen to) crime fiction, you must hie yourself over there immediately, er, as soon as you finish reading this post. One of Jen’s recent posts in particular caught my eye, her effusive review of Louise Penny’s The Brutal Telling. She sold me on it, and a few months later I read the first book in Penny’s Inspector Gamache series, Still Life and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, those were the days before I had FictFact to manage my series intake, and I managed to more or less forget about the Gamache series for some time, until this latest book, A Trick of the Light was released. Suddenly I find myself in possession of the most recent audiobook, after hearing over and over again from Jen and other bloggers I trust how fantastic the audiobooks are, but at the same time being told that I really should read at least the two previous books before getting to this one. Here’s a description of A Trick of the Light I found on Indiebound:

“Hearts are broken,” Lillian Dyson carefully underlined in a book. “Sweet relationships are dead.”
But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow’s garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara’s solo show at the famed Musée in Montreal. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, is called to the tiny Quebec village and there he finds the art world gathered, and with it a world of shading and nuance, a world of shadow and light. Where nothing is as it seems. Behind every smile there lurks a sneer. Inside every sweet relationship there hides a broken heart. And even when facts are slowly exposed, it is no longer clear to Gamache and his team if what they’ve found is the truth, or simply a trick of the light.

soundbytes picture If you suddenly see an influx of Louise Penny reviews on this blog, you’ll know why. It is me, desperately trying to catch up so I can listen to A Trick of the Light. If you’re curious, you can listen to a clip and see why I’m so looking forward to it.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Making Waves by Tawna Fenske

Sep 012011

Making Waves by Tawna Fenske
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks

They were married within five minutes of meeting. Or, at least, they pretended to be married, in order to win a newlywed game and split the prize money. Alex and Juli are on St. Johns for two very different reasons: Juli to scatter her uncle’s ashes, Alex to play pirate and raid his ex-boss’s ship with a gang of fellow former employees. Although their paths really shouldn’t keep crossing, they do, to sexy and hilarious results.

I am not a habitual reader of romance, so I’m a bit hard-pressed (I’m sure Fenske would find this phrase hilarious) to give Making Waves the review it deserves. There were some things that absolutely made me roll my eyes, like Juli’s ultra-convenient shocking secret, but I have no idea how accepted this sort of thing is in the realm of romance, particularly Fenske’s subgenre of humorous romance. After giving it some thought, I decided that this was meant to be a fun, somewhat escapist read, and so I wouldn’t let those sorts of coincidences bother me, whatever the genre conventions.

And really, fun and escapist describes Making Waves perfectly. After following Fenke for the last year on The Debutante Ball and occasionally on her personal blog Don’t Pet Me, I’m Writing, I was pretty confident that Making Waves would be hilarious and a little bit dirty, and it lived up to my expectations 100%. This is an enjoyable frolic with a fun, flirty romance, great for reliving your memories of the warm summer sun this fall.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.