Begin the Week with Words

Randomly thought of a topic I haven't googled quotes on recently - hope. Something we all need and can't afford to forget. Emily Dickinson put it quite elegantly saying, "'Hope' is the thing with feathers - / That perches in the soul - / And sings the tune without the words - / And never stops - at all - ." It is probably my favorite quote on hope, but looking through a few others, I found some I'd like to share.

I think life would be easier for people
if they realized this.

Regret has a way of sneaking up on you even
when you think something is too far past
for it to be a memory, let alone a problem.

I like this one a lot. Words that stand
for their meaning in some way are the best!

Last, but not least, my phone's 

ringtone has been the song "Hope Now," 

by Addison Road, for quite awhile. Enjoy.

Well, hope you have a hopeful week readers! 

Our Endless Numbered Days

Source: Amazon.com

I recently had the privilege of hosting author Claire Fuller on My Life in Books for the second annual #30Authors event. Her book, Our Endless Numbered Days, was coming up on my TBR list, so I jumped it ahead when I heard she was the author I'd be hosting.

Amazon has a succinct summary, so why reinvent the wheel? 

"In 1970s London, eight-year-old Peggy Hillcoat lives somewhat contentedly with her survivalist father and her concert pianist mother. When her mother goes on tour, her father abruptly kidnaps Peggy, taking her to a German forest. He claims that the world has ended and that her mother, along with every other human on Earth, has died. She resigns herself to a life in the cold, remote woods with her mentally unstable father, little food, and no medical care, not resurfacing until 1985."

The story is told by 17-year-old Peggy, going between present day as she reacclimates to life in 1985 and flashbacks of her life in the woods with her father. The piecing together of the story definitely holds the reader in suspense, always wondering what Peggy will endure next? However, it's the ending that makes you double take, doubting yourself and reexamining what you thought was and what could actually be. 

And that's all you're getting! Go read!

Begin the Week with Words

Been thinking about journeys an awful lot lately. How life is a journey, but it's a journey made from a string of journeys. The journey can be hard at times. It demands courage despite fear. It demands steps of faith despite weakness. It gives even as it takes. The greatest boon is often found in the dark and scary places you overcome. And in the end, we are not the same person as when we started.

#30Authors Presents Claire Fuller

We are ten days into one of the biggest book blogging events of the year - #30Authors! #30Authors is an annual event connecting readers, authors, and bloggers. Throughout the month of September, 30 authors review their favorite books on 30 blogs in 30 days. The event has been met with incredible support from and success within the literary community. In the six months following the event’s inaugural launch, the concept was published as an anthology by Velvet Morning Press (Legacy: An Anthology). Started by The Book Wheel, #30Authors remains active throughout the year and you can join in the fun by following along on Twitter at @30Authors, using the hashtag, #30Authors, or purchasing the anthology. To learn more about the event, please click here.

Hello there Readers! It's probably a given to most of us that authors are rock stars. They make our dreams come true in many ways. But who is your rock star if you ARE an author? #30Authors helps answer that question and today we have a glimpse into rock star author Claire Fuller's opinion of The Casualties, by Nick Holdstock. I am extremely excited to host Claire Fuller's review today. Her book, Our Endless Numbered Days, received rave reviews on all fronts and I highly recommend it! Without further ado, here's Claire:

How many of us know the people who live on our street well enough to describe all their quirks and idiosyncrasies? Not many, I’d guess. But perhaps it might be worth getting to understand them a little better.

Sam Clark is curious about his neighbours, he wants to find out everything about the eccentric people who live and work on Comely Bank, a street in Edinburgh in 2016/2017: the man who lives under a bridge and gives unhelpful health advice; the girl with bad skin who falls in love with Sam; the nymphomaniac who looks after an obese man with learning difficulties and many more. The novel is told by a narrator living sixty years in the future after half the world has been destroyed, and the post-apocalyptic sections, although much shorter than the parts set on Comely Bank, provide an interesting reflection on how we identify and describe people today. The narrator says that in the future people’s lives and actions won’t be explained by their histories – where they lived, what they did, who their parents were – but individuals will be taken at face value. And the fact that the reader knows that many or possibly all of these characters won’t survive adds pathos to each personal history.

Holdstock drip-feeds information about the disaster in a way that teases and intrigues, until the end of the book, when time and characters literally collide.

Like the novels of Richard Brautigan and Haruki Murakami, The Casualties is full of magic realism and black comedy, and to enjoy it completely you have to give yourself up to its strangeness. You have to accept, just like the narrator does, that there is nothing odd about people walking backwards, that it’s normal for a couple to stroll with their wrists tied together by string, or to come across a book called, ‘When Big Dogs are Small’. It took me a chapter or two to stop questioning the reality of the story, but once I accepted the odd and wonderful world that Holdstock has created, I loved it. 

Highly recommended.

Entry-Form

Author Bio Claire Fuller’s debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days has recently been published in the UK, US, Canada and France and will be published in a further five countries. It is the 2015 winner of the Desmond Elliott prize for debut fiction and has been nominated for the Edinburgh First Book Award. Claire lives in Winchester, England with her husband and children. 

You can purchase her book from:  Amazon (US)  Powells (US)  Amazon (UK)

Visit Claire Fuller on: Goodreads Twitter - @ClaireFuller2 Author Site

Did Claire convince you to read The Casualties, by Nick Holdstock? You can find Nick and his book on the following sites: Amazon Goodreads Author Site

Begin the Week with Words

I didn't forget Sunday Sentence, just delayed! For the past three weeks, there hasn't been much up on the blog, but that's changing this week. Besides a couple book reviews, we have author Claire Fuller posting a review later this week, and hopefully Student Spotlights starting up again.

As a side note, blog self hosting is on hold for now. My car needed repairs and apparently so does my dog, so....yea, broke the bank.

And, finally, two Tyler Knott Gregson poems I came across this week. The man is seriously talented. I read his poetry and either can relate to it now or would have sometime in the past. I wish I could write feelings so clearly and beautifully!

Begin the Week with Words

I survived the first week of school with new classes. I survived my older high school daughter being on a university campus by herself for the first time. I survived my other daughter being in Canada for a week with her grandparents. What a week, my mind in a million places. It was a week that could use a quick "Hey, how are you? Hanging in there?" and some hang out time, but you can't always count on that, so I kept myself really busy and collected quotes as they came to me. My usual person of inspiration, Ann Voskamp, makes her millionth appearance on the blog today with a few quotes I found in her blog posts. Have a good week everyone.


"Sometimes doing the most important thing eternally – doesn’t look like you are doing anything noticeably."

"The real essence of the universe is endless grace."

"Apparent failures can be the way your Father births a successful faith." 

Begin the Week with Words

I squeezed in one more book before my students come back to school tomorrow, appropriately the YA novel Every Day by David Levithan. More on my opinion of it later this week, but I can say I found a few good quotes that stood out. Things I felt were universal truths, I guess you could say. So here are two of them, enjoy your week!

"I know from experience that beneath every peripheral girl is a central truth. She's hiding hers away, but at the same time she wants me to see it." 

"She's being kind. Which is much more a sign of character than mere niceness. Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen."