Book Review Party Wednesday - LIVE!!

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Welcome to Book Review Party Wednesday.

It is real simple. Link up any (old or new, any genre) book review that you have
written to the below MckLinky.

A couple of things to remember while you're linking.

1. Add a permalink to your specific post, not the main page of your blog (only one review per blog).
2. Add my Book Review Wednesday Badge or a link-back to the party at the end of your review post.
3. List the name of your blog, Title of Book or Genre. Be sure to use spaces and limit characters to 50. For example: The Lost Symbol, thriller

4. Become a follower of my blog, pretty please (not mandatory).
5. Visit the other linked up reviews and leave comments....it's a party, have fun!
6. I will announce the winner in a weekend post. The winner is chosen from the linked up reviewers using Random Number Generator. All included.

I am so excited to be reading all the reviews! This is always so much fun and gives me the opportunity to add new books to my list.

-CYM

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Gun Games by Faye Kellerman *Book Review*

Gun Games
by Faye Kellerman
(Wm Morrow 2012)

The passion and devotion of young love is a precious experience for each of us. It can happen at any time of life. In this context, to me, the word young simply means abandonment of reason to the cherished experience of loving another person.

How do you feel about that? Can young love happen later in life, or is it relegated to youth who actually don’t have the life experience to know any better. To me, a huge element of the emotion is having lived enough life to appreciate the investment of self.

In Gun Games, young love emerges at the high school level. The protagonists are Gabe, a 17 year-old son of a gangster living with police officers. A Juilliard quality pianist, he is on his way to New York City or Harvard. Yasmine is just 14, a child with potential talent as a singer. She is fascinated with opera and invites Gabe in a coffee shop to share tickets with her. Can love blossom between a Catholic son of a gangster and a protected Persian Jewish girl?

The detective who has opened his home to Gabe is investigating two suicides at an elite private school. The hallways of the school harbor a full range of cheating, thievery, drugs, sex, guns, and other intrigue probably predictable in a world of too much money and too little supervision. The story focuses on a gang led by the big man on campus, who has an arm full of scholarships to name brand universities.

Gabe and Yasmine fall passionately in love. Their reactions feel like those of mature people. The gang focuses first on Gabe, then on Yasmine, as the detective and his team are circling on the odd connections between the gang and the unexplained suicides.

Ms. Kellerman, as always, provides a thoroughly enjoying read, as love and danger collide. The dangers are fearsome as the gang, the gangster trained young man, police on the prowl, a Persian family intent on protecting the innocence of their daughter from the heathen boy, parents of the gang members who will spend any amount on lawyers to protect the honor of their persecuted offspring, all collide. Can these strands be brought together?

In the midst of enjoying such a finely written story, I always search for the keys to successful fiction writing. In this case, there were many, including the art of bridging time and space with a seamless flow of story. On the other hand, the description of love between 17 and 14 year-olds seemed forced, as did the seemingly constant description of erections and oral sex. 

Is this necessary in the context of a thought-provoking story? I wondered closing the back cover, satisfied with an enjoyable experience.

Warms, Cym

AMAZON

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Winner of Wednesday's Book Review Party

*all winners are selected by Random Number Generator *

And the winner of the Amazon Gift Card ($15 value) from Wednesday's Review Party is...

(**Drums Rolling in the Background**)

Congratulations to Colloquium!



Be sure to check out Colloquium and leave a comment!


Send me your email address for the Amazon eGC.

Warms-
CYM

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Author Spotlight: Batya Casper

Israela

by Batya Casper

Tate Publishing 2011

Synopsis:

In Israel, the lives of three women interweave with the story of their country. Ratiba, an Israeli journalist, turns her back on her heritage to marry an Israeli Arab. Her sister Orit, an actor, lives alone and longs for her lost sister. Elisheva is a nurse who dedicates her life to the wounded and the dying. As their lives unfold, the three women find themselves facing choices they would never have envisioned.
This is a story of secrets and alienation, yet also of hope and heroism. It is about Arabs who save Jews from disaster and Jews who heal Arabs. It is the story of everyday people torn and desperately searching for the right path.

Author Bio: Batya Casper

Batya Casper is a director, actor and teacher of theater. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Lived in Manchester and London, England; Johannesburg, South Africa; Jerusalem and Caesarea, Israel; in Boston, Massachusetts; New Haven, CT; St. Louis, Mo; and Los Angeles, CA.

She has a BA in English literature; and a Masters and a Ph.D. in theater Arts from UCLA.

Batya has lived in Israel intermittently since early childhood, has taught Hebrew literature and biblical studies at an adult education center in St. Louis, and Hebrew to adults in Boston.  She worked as an Assistant to the Cultural Attache of Israel in Boston, as the coordinator of educational programs for exchange students between U.S. and Israel. She has lived in Israel intermittently since early childhood; has watched friends and family struggle, question, sacrifice their children.


Additional Resources:


Israelathebook
Facebook
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Thank you Batya Casper for being the week's Author Spotlight!

-CYM

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Wednesday's Book Review Party and Amazon G'way - LIVE!

<a href="http://cymlowell.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="CymLowell" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2442/3960797566_f11cfb2f41_o.jpg" /></a>

Welcome to Book Review Party Wednesday.

It is real simple. Link up any (old or new, any genre) book review that you have
written to the below MckLinky.

A couple of things to remember while you're linking.

1. Add a permalink to your specific post, not the main page of your blog (only one review per blog).
2. Add my Book Review Wednesday Badge or a link-back to the party at the end of your review post.
3. List the name of your blog, Title of Book or Genre. Be sure to use spaces and limit characters to 50. For example: The Lost Symbol, thriller

4. Become a follower of my blog, pretty please (not mandatory).
5. Visit the other linked up reviews and leave comments....it's a party, have fun!
6. I will announce the winner in a weekend post. The winner is chosen from the linked up reviewers using Random Number Generator. All included.

I am so excited to be reading all the reviews! This is always so much fun and gives me the opportunity to add new books to my list.

-CYM

Read More

Winner of Wednesday's Book Review Party

*all winners are selected by Random Number Generator *

And the winner of the Amazon Gift Card ($15 value) from Wednesday's Review Party is...

(**Drums Rolling in the Background**)

Congratulations to Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks!



Be sure to check out Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks and leave a comment!


Send me your email address for the Amazon eGC.

Warms-
CYM

Read More

Author Spotlight: Lee Harrington

Rex and the City

by Lee Harrington

In this humorous, moving, intelligent and startlingly original memoir, critically-acclaimed author Lee Harrington shares her story of love, loss, dysfunctional relationships, and the shelter dog who put things right. In 1997, Lee and her then-boyfriend Ed were on the verge of breaking up. Money was tight, their careers were floundering (Lee was an aspiring novelist: Ed was an aspiring documentary filmmaker) and their personalities, frankly, did not mix. Plus, they lived in a crumbling, cramped tenement apartment on the Lower East Side—for which they paid more than they earned. Tempers, needless to say, often flared.

Then, on a fateful day in August 1997, they decided on impulse to visit a nearby animal shelter, just to “look at” dogs. In a split-second decision that would change their lives, they brought home a troubled spaniel mix named Wallace. They quickly realized that this dog was more than they could handle—he was aggressive, fearful of humans, untrained and seemingly untrainable. For the first few months of their new lives with this aggressive animal, Lee and Ted struggled with the question—the reality—of whether they could realistically rehabilitate this dog (they even considered bringing him back to the shelter). They also struggled with the question of whether they could make it as a couple. Faced with a new responsibly, they bickered constantly, worried incessantly, cried daily (mostly Lee) and disagreed on nearly every aspect of how to handle the dog. Their disagreements ranged from how to train the dog to where he should sleep to what to feed him. But the one thing they could agree on was that they loved their dog. And slowly but surely, that love helped transform both the dog and the relationship. Both Lee and Ed, through the dog, learned how to love in new and fearless ways. And thus, by rescuing a needy spaniel, they ended up rescuing themselves.

Written with keen insight, sparkling humor, piercing honesty and masterful prose, Harrington’s memoir leaves the reader with the sense that, while adopting an abused dog can often be a challenge at first, the rewards are limitless. This is an exhilarating book—readers will laugh out loud, smile in recognition, nod in empathy, and/or pause in reflection as Harrington shares both her pains and her joys of her life with a troubled dog. Mostly, readers will be reminded—in a delightful way—that love does indeed conquer all. Especially dog love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About the Author:

Lee Harrington is an award-winning, critically-acclaimed author and musician who divides her time between New York City, Woodstock, and–when she is lucky—the south of France. Her memoir, Rex and the City: True Tales of a Rescue Dog Who Rescued a Relationship (published by Random House and now available in enhanced eBook edition) is hailed as “the best human with dog memoir you’ll ever read.” Her forthcoming books include two novels (The Expatriate’s Guide to Heartbreak and Secrets in Motion); a memoir about her experiences living in a tent at a Tibetan Buddhist retreat center after losing her husband, apartment, job and beloved dog (entitled, for now,In Tents); a four-volume young-adult fantasy series (which seems to be writing itself at the moment); and a second volume of Rex and the City. Lee is also working on a screenplay based on two Edith Wharton short stories. And that’s just her day job.

At night, Lee is lead singer in various rock bands. In 2012 she is recording her first CD—a companion CD to The Expatriate’s Guide to Heartbreak, with eleven songs based on characters, lines and deleted chapters from that novel. Lee is also a kirtan walli and has lead kirtans throughout the East Coast. She leads chants from the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Sufi and Native American traditions and continues to study mantra, chanting, and sacred sound with masters from many traditions.

Also at night, Lee teaches creative writing at New York University and studies graphic design, sound healing and energy medicine.

Sometimes she has to wake up extra early in order to compose essays, stories, columns and blogs—which have appeared in such publications as Salon, Huffington Post, Poets and Writers, One for the Table and The Bark as well as in various fiction and non-fiction anthologies. For the past decade she has been an Editor-at-Large and contributor at Bark magazine.

Her other hobbies include Kundalini yoga, painting, samurai sword, and graphic design.

She considers it a great gift to be able to do what she loves, and aspires to give back to the world in some meaningful way. Thus, Lee always gives 10% of her book, music, and art proceeds to animal rescue.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Resource Links:

Amazon

Lee Harrington

RexandtheCity

You don't want to miss the great web sites listed above (Rex and the City & Lee Harrington). So great! Thank you Lee for being this week's Author Spotlight.

-CYM

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