Sea View 12

My 2 cents: It's January, temperatures plummeted to 17 degrees this weekend (in North Carolina!), and I want to go to the beach. January and February are bleak months for me, and I must not be the only one. No wonder Sports Illustrated publishes their annual swimsuit issue in February. I got my swimsuit issue today from Lands' End. If I can't be at the beach to hear the waves and the gulls, I can read about it, which is why I pulled an old favorite off the library shelf this weekend and read it again. A New Song, by Jan Karon, first published in 1999, is the fifth book in her much-loved Mitford series. A New Song takes Father Tim Kavanagh and wife, Cynthia, to a year-long interim pastorate on Whitecap Island, somewhere off the coast of North Carolina or Virginia. Accessible by a small bridge (when it's not out), and otherwise by ferry, the island interim proves both challenging (terrible storm, infidelity, depression, theft, two mysterious ne...

“This story would be remarkable no matter who it happened to. That it happened to Dr. Alexander makes it revolutionary. No scientist or person of faith will be able to ignore it. Reading it will change your life.” Those aren't my words. That text appears on the back cover of Dr. Eben Alexander's new book,  Proof   of Heaven   (A Neurosurgeon's   Journey into the   Afterlife) . But after reading it, I agree. My 2 cents: Q: Who is Eben Alexander, M.D.? A: Dr. Alexander is an academic neurosurgeon, now in Virginia, formerly in Boston, Massachusetts at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham Women's & Children's Hospitals. The son of a doctor, Dr. Alexander grew up in Winston-Salem (where his father was chief of staff at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center), graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1976 with a chemistry major, and four years later, earned his doctorate at Duke University Medical Center in Durham. Dr. Alexander's family includes his wife, ...

My 2 cents: Like the steam engine Elizabeth Keckley describes on p. 242, Jennifer Chiaverini's newest novel,  Mrs.   Lincoln's Dressmaker,  starts out slow, chugs along steadily, then gathers steam until it becomes impossible for the reader to get off the train. By the end of the ride, the reader is completely immersed with a real sense of who these extraordinary people - Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln, and President Abraham Lincoln – really were. I could almost hear the late Paul Harvey (famous radio broadcaster … ) intoning, “And now you know … The Rest of the Story.” Chiaverini's a scholar, without a doubt. In fact, this work of historical fiction could easily be a companion book, alongside U.S. History textbooks, and if I were teaching the Civil War, I'd make sure my students had a copy of  Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker. But, the best parts are the glimpses inside the White House, inside the lives of Elizabeth, Mary Lincoln, President Lincoln, ...

My 2 cents: Have you ever picked up a brand new book and felt a shiver of excitement, knowing that you,   you , are the first person to thumb its crisp pages and read its beautiful, clean print? That's how I felt when I first held The FitzOsbornes at War (The Montmaray Journals, Book III ), by Michelle Cooper, in my hands. I almost didn't want to read it. Especially since I knew that this book is the last one in Cooper's spellbinding WWII trilogy, as recorded by Princess Sophia of Montmaray. Classified as Young Adult Literature, Cooper's book easily appeals to adults of all ages, young and otherwise. In The FitzOsbornes at War , Sophia chronicles her experiences in WWII London from 1939 to 1944, with a beautifully-written epilogue, “Four Years Later”. Through Sophie, Cooper captivates the reader with conversations about queue lines (waiting for everything from a single onion to a can of Spam), and relentless, German bombing raids, while she and Princess Ve...

My 2 cents: Jennifer Chiaverini has written over 20 books. A New York Times bestselling author for her Elm Creek Quilts series, Chiaverini is a master of writing and quilting. The Giving Quilt was my first Chiaverini novel, and I'm already looking forward to her next one. I loved the pattern of her novel, and as I read her work, I can picture Chiaverini at her own sewing machine or quilting frame, sewing patch by patch, stitch by stitch. The Giving Quilt opens with Sylvia and her staff preparing for a week-long quilting workshop, where women will arrive from all over the country to spend a week at the spacious, illustrious old Elm Creek Manor. There, they will make new friends with fellow quilters, renew old friendships, learn a new quilt pattern, eat delicious, home-cooked meals, and make quilts for “Project Linus,” an organization dedicated to providing soft, warm quilts to children in need. The annual quilt event is held each year the week after Thanksgiving, th...

My two cents: Lauren Conrad's on to something.  Starstruck , Conrad's second novel in the bestselling “Fame Game” series, drew me in and had me cheering in the end.  Starstuck  follows the lives of Madison Parker and four other20-something girls; sister Sophie, roommate Gaby, friend Kate Hayes and frenemy, Carmen Curtis, as the young beauties strive to “make it” in Los Angeles. With Trevor Lord filming  everything  they do for a reality television show. Conrad's new novel takes a darker turn with Gaby's accidental overdose, Madison's jewelry “theft” and its consequences, Kate's music career and Carmen's relationships. I admit, I like Conrad's serious side. I like the way she develops Madison's character, and I like the way she exposes the “secrets” of reality television. Couldn't help thinking about the Kardashians, and just how “real” their reality shows are. Fans of Conrad's former MTV reality show,  The Hills , will have fun gu...

My 2 cents: The Sandcastle Girls  by Chris Bohjalian is a book like no other I've read. The author plunks us down squarely in the sweltering heat and sun of 1915 Aleppo, capital of Syria. Through Laura's eyes, a young, blue-eyed, red-haired college graduate from Boston, we see hundreds of Armenian women and childen “march” into Aleppo seeking refuge, many finding death instead. Don't be embarrassed if you're scratching your head. Listen to Laura on p.6: “1915 is the year of the Slaughter You Know Next To Nothing About. If you are not Armenian, you probably know little about the deportations and the massacres: the death of a million and a half civilians. Meds Yeghern. The Great Catastrophe. It's not taught much in school, and it's not the sort of thing most of us read before going to bed.” Laura's right about that.  The Sandcastle Girls  isn't exactly a bedtime story, either. The pages describing atrocities inflicted on the Armenians...

My two cents: Confession time – I couldn't get through Lauren Conrad's 2010 novel, Sugar and Spice , and I tried valiantly. Really, I did (It was a New York Times bestseller, after all). I made it to p. 81, Chapter 9, and there the page remains turned down, because I never picked up the “L.A. Candy” novel again. But, SHOCKER (to me, at least), I was intrigued enough to pick up Conrad's new novel, THE FAME GAME, and I finished it in two days. THE FAME GAME takes up where Sugar and Spice leaves off, with uber-ambitious, blonde-and-beautiful Madison Parker. Madison's old boss, Trevor Lord, has a new reality television series in mind for her called “The Fame Game,” where she'll have the starring role (pinkie swear – for real). Gaby, Carmen and Kate are signed on to play Madison's “best friends in the series.” The show's plot line chronicles their relationships, their jobs, and their respective struggles to “make it” in Hollywood. If this plot line sound...