A Raffle for A Night at the Bookstore, Tea, The Art of Racing in the Rain Trailer, Fields of Air, Fields of Iron and Fields of Gold by Shelley Adina and The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

I've been busy with a freelance assignment, and I've also had some computer issues these past two weeks, so that's why this blog post is late, but, better late than never, as the saying goes. First up is a great idea that I wish some bookstores around here, few though they may be, would adopt. I'd love to spend the night in a bookstore, surrounded by tantalizing new reads!

 Cool Idea: 'A Night at the Bookstore'

"Dropping $5 on a raffle ticket might give you the chance to spend the night http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40659533 with a friend or family member at Purple Crow Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40659534," the News of Orange County noted in showcasing a fundraising effort by the Hillsborough, N.C., Kiwanis "for Orange County students in need of eyeglasses and eye doctor appointments." The main prize winner receives a night at the bookstore, a $100 book gift certificate and breakfast for two at Cup A Joe.

"Besides helping students with vision issues I hope this encourages people to visit Purple Crow Books," said Hillsborough Kiwanis president Tom Carr. "I am a voracious reader and I am a great supporter of independent bookstores.... It's always been a fantasy for me--to spend a night at the bookstore or library with no one else there to bother me, no one looking over my shoulder."

He added that bookstore owner Sharon Wheeler has been supportive of the fundraiser idea from the start.

"Tom Carr has boundless energy for helping children, and boundless creativity," Wheeler said. "The store is right downtown and I know it'll feel very safe for our guest--it'll be wonderful."

 Another great idea, because I adore tea, and grew up with tea drinkers, like my mom and grandmothers and great grandmothers.

Cool Idea of the Day: Kya's Blend Tea Asheville Tea Co. http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40685504 has released Kya's Blend http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40685505, a limited-run tea blend inspired by the main character in the novel Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, who recently appeared at an author event hosted by Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe Asheville, N.C. The Citizen Times reported that Kya's Blend "pairs Ceylon black tea http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40685508> with native North Carolina coastal plants, including Yaupon, along with White Pine, Myrtle Leaf, Lemon Balm, Lemon Peel, Cedar Berry and Bay Leaf."

"Putnam Books were looking for a brand partner to promote the book and do a sweepstakes and specifically for a North Carolina-based tea company because the book is based in North Carolina," said Asheville Tea Co. owner Jessie Dean. "The original connection was reading and tea as a lifestyle, but it really became a custom blend that brings Kya's experience of living in the marsh to life with the tea, inspired by the native botanicals of the Carolina coast."

Dean said she met Owens for the first time May 8 at Malaprop's and gave her packages of the loose leaf tea: "It was really powerful and exciting and interesting to be able to hear more about her life story and background and how that brought the book into being....

"Our mission as a company is to source locally as much as possible and to promote environmental sustainability. So it was even more exciting to hear her background as a zoologist and conservationist and how those values really align with ours."

I loved this book, and interviewed the author, Garth Stein, for an article in the Mercer Island Reporter back in 2005. I am thrilled that this wonderful tale has finally made it to the big screen, with the fantastic Milo V heading it up, and with Kevin Costner as the voice of Enzo the golden retriever. My family had a golden retriever/terrier mix named Buddy who also had a great personality. I sincerely hope this movie succeeds, and that more people are drawn to the book.

Movies: The Art of Racing in the Rain Trailer

Milo Ventimiglia (This is Us) "is revving up his engines in the newly released official trailer for the upcoming man-and-dog family drama, The Art of Racing in the Rain http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40719080, from Fox 2000," Deadline reported. Based on Garth Stein's bestselling novel and directed by Simon Curtis, the film stars Amanda Seyfried, Gary Cole, Kathy Baker, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Martin Donovan, as well as Kevin Costner as the voice of Enzo. It is scheduled to hit theaters August 9. Mark Bomback adapted the screenplay. Neal H. Moritz, Patrick Dempsey, and Tania Landau produced. 

Fields of Air, Fields of Iron and Fields of Gold, by Shelley Adina are the final three books in her Magnificent Devices steampunk series. I got book #10 at the library, though I had to buy the other two books, but they were well worth the trade paperback price. I was particularly excited to read Gloria Meriwether-Astor's final scenes, and know that she's happy and ready to begin her family life. Here are the three blurbs for the books: Book #10:Her father started a war. She intends to stop it.

Her father may have sacrificed his own life to save hers, but heiress Gloria Meriwether-Astor is finding it difficult to forgive him. After all, how many young ladies of her acquaintance will inherit wealth, beauty, and a legacy of arms dealing? Now the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias is about to declare war on the Texican Territory and Gloria simply will not allow it.

In company with Alice Chalmers and the crew of Swan, along with a lost young Evan Douglas seeking reparation for his own sins, she takes to the air. Her intention--to stop the train carrying the final shipment of monstrous mechanicals into the Wild West. But they should have known that making a deal with air pirate Ned Mose in exchange for his help could never end well.
What is a lady of principle to do? For the lives of thousands may depend on her ability to stop the war ... even if it means losing everything and everyone she has come to love.

Book # 11:"What do you propose, sir?"
He held her astonished gaze as he went down upon one knee. "Why ... I propose.
Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife, so that I may accompany you to San Francisco de Asis and help you stop this war?"

Gloria Meriwether-Astor, determined to end the invasion her father and a power-hungry diplomat started, has found safety with the witches of the river canyons in the Wild West. But how can one young lady without so much as a hat to her name challenge a kingdom? Confronted with the solution--marriage--she has two choices: accept the help she needs, or return to Philadelphia alone and a failure.
So, in the company of riverboat captain Stan Fremont--the dashing rogue she must now call husband--she sets off for the capital to negotiate with the Viceroy. But with an entire country mobilizing between herself and her objective, the attempt could mean her life--and the life of the one person she is beginning to care for.

Book # 12:If a wedding won't stop a war, what will?

Gloria Meriwether-Astor's belief in doing the right thing has carried her across the world and through dangers that would have felled a lesser woman. She believed that if she married the dashing Captain Fremont, she could approach the Viceroy of the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias with impunity. She could convince the prince to stop the war their fathers began, and then she could return to Philadelphia with her husband, her conscience clear at last. Sadly, belief and reality are two different things. The prince agrees to her proposal on one condition--that she annul her marriage and become his wife instead!
Every woman has a threshold she will not cross. Gloria has come to love her riverboat captain, and the price of peace is simply too high. But when the evil stalking the pleasant gardens of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa claims its victim, the time for belief is over and the time to act--daringly, outrageously--is at hand. Do the witches hold the key to a way out of this trap?
All Gloria has to do is take up the crown of roses and play for the highest stakes. All she has to do is become the iron dragon, and start a war of her own.

So I was not surprised, SPOILER, when Joe turns out to be the half sister/brother of Felipe, the king of the California territories, working as a spy (whose real name is Honoria) but I was delighted when they decided to pull a "prince and the pauper" scam so that the real king could recover from poisoning and Honoria/Joe could pretend to marry Gloria and make some long awaited changes in how things are run, not the least of which is stopping a civil war. I really felt Gloria's growth over the three books, though she still seemed a bit too silly and miss-ish at times, and the author kept making it clear that she was a blonde, with all the stereotypes that this entails in books and movies. That said, for the most part, the women in this series play against type, and are very smart and independent, though they do fall in love and have relationships with men, albeit mostly enlightened men. Adina's prose is fantastic and full of wit and whimsy, while her plots are always as swift as her airships/blimps that her characters use to get around in record time. I loved this series, and would give it an overall A, with a recommendation to anyone who enjoys Gail Carrigers Soulless series or Devon Monk's steampunk series or Lilith Saintcrow's Bannon and Clare series. 

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson was recommended to me by several people who know I like unusual women-lead stories and tales that take place in small villages or towns full of characters. Unfortunately, though this book does contain all those things, it's mainly a difficult story about racism, sexism and ignorant, nearly illiterate mountain people of Kentucky in the 1930s. The first half of the book has the protagonist, Cussy Mary, or "Bluet" as the townspeople have nicknamed her because her skin is blue, constantly under threat of rape from the local minister, or actually being raped by the minister's brother, whom her father insists on her marrying for her 'safety.' Her husband subsequently verbally and physically abuses her and rapes her until she's nearly dead. Fortunately he dies of a heart attack before he can finish her off. Now that she's a widow, she's under threat of rape again while she completes her rounds on her mule as a librarian, bringing books and newspapers to people who, if they don't read themselves, at least want their children to learn to read and write. During the rest of the book we are treated to more abuse and a lot of death by starvation, especially of children, and we learn how far most of the white skinned townspeople will go to keep 'colored' people separate and away from their business, their public festivities and even their toilets. Here is the blurb:

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything—everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter.
Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she's going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachias and suspicion as deep as the holler.
Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere — even back home. 

I wanted to like this book so badly that I soldiered on through the horrific first half of the book, which was grotesque and depressing, only to realize that it just wasn't going to get any better until the end, and even then, I found that there wasn't a whole lot to recommend this book unless you are not prone to depression and are willing to suspend disbelief about a group of people with a medical condition that turned their skin blue due to under oxygenated blood. The Pack Horse Librarian program sounded wonderful in the beginning, but the main character, Cussy Mary, could only get the most ratty and reused books and old newspapers to share, and had to make her own 'scrapbooks' of recipes and Bible quotes and old fashioned remedies  to supplement the dearth of material she was allowed (colored people weren't allowed newer items or recent newspapers due to prejudice). In the end, SPOILER, though Cussy Mary marries a white man who loves her just as she is, he ends up being jailed under the backwards racist laws of Kentucky that don't allow the races to mix. The two have to meet in secret once he's out of jail, and it is never clear if they do end up together as a family in another state where they won't be persecuted. While all this is painful to read, Richardson's prose is full of Southern charm, and her plot never strays from the path. I'd give this book a B-, and though I can't really say that I enjoyed the book, I would recommend it to those who want to know more about this small group of genetically blue skinned people and how they lived and died in the 1930s American South.