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A Fabulous Lunch with Lander Marks
While I was in Las Vegas earlier this month I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Lander Marks for lunch at the Venetian. Even if my trip to Sin City hadn’t been for work, this would have been the highlight of my time there. Not only is she the first author I’ve met, she is the first person I’ve met solely because of The Literate Housewife Review. It’s as if our meeting gave full life to the blog that I’ve grown to love and cherish since early January 2007.
I consider myself to be an outgoing person, but sometimes when you’re meeting someone for the first time there is this build up inside and it can feel somewhat overwhelming. As excited as I was, I was also a bit nervous. The Venetian is a huge place, so by phone we agreed to meet at The Grill at Valentino. She used a copy of Artist’s Proof for me to recognize her and my butterflies were gone the second we started to speak. Lander Marks is as gracious and warm in person as she was during our interview.
We had the most wonderful lunch. I had a ravioli with blue cheese dish that was the best meal I ate while in Vegas. I even got the opportunity to meet the restaurant’s chef, Luciano. He is a friend she met while creating a Las Vegas cookbook. It was marvelous to say the least.
While we ate, we got to know each other a little better. We talked about writing, reading, motherhood, politics and blogging. She is starting a new blog called books4oprah2read. She has big plans for this blog, such as including a place for reading groups and a place specifically for Jewish authors and readers. I’m really excited to see where this blog takes her.
There is something deeply affirming about talking with someone who believes in you and what you do. I left our lunch on cloud 9, as you can tell from the picture our waiter took before we returned back to the real world (if you can call anything in Vegas the real world). Lander Marks is holding a copy of her book while I’m beaming in pink:
Oh Lord, it feels good to be a reader!
July Book Blowout!
I am joining Marg from Reading Adventures and Amy from Passages to the Past in Blue Archipelago’s fun July Book Blowout challenge. I thought this would be a fun way to encourage me to read the pile of ARCs I have on my night stand. So, I’m challenging myself to read 7 books this month. This will really be a stretch for me because I’m averaging only about a book a week so far this year. I really enjoy reading and reviewing ARCs, but it would be nice to have some room to read some historical fiction and other books I would select for myself during the dog day’s of summer. August marks the beginning of the Book Award Challenge II, so I also need get myself prepared for that.
Would you like to join me? If so, here’s how to get started:
How do I join in the fun?
- You can sign up any time between today and July 14 – just because I’m a bit slow to announce this!
- To join you need to post about the Book Blowout on your blog – and set yourself a target number of books you will try to read – go on challenge yourself! (Please note: If you do not have a blog I am perfectly happy for you to post your target in the comments below – and then the list of books in the wrap-up post in August)
- Use the Mr Linky below to link to that post so we can all see how many books you’re taking on in the Blowout
- Post a list of the books you managed to read by the deadline of August 7 to complete the challenge
What rules do I need to know?
- Only books read between July 1 and July 31 count towards the challenge
- You can include re-reads – as long as they are read within the month of July
- Books you abandon will only count as half a book
- If you read to your children you can include all books which have more than 100 pages
- You can include up to two graphic novels
- You can include up to two audio books – (if you have a visual impairment that prevents you from reading then you can use just audio books for the challenge)
- Books you read for other challenges are eligible – use this as an opportunity to catch up!
- If you start a book before July 1 and then finish it during the month of July then you can count is as half a book
And the Winner is…
I have had the great good fortune of working with Phyllis Zimbler Miller on a contest to give away a free copy of Mrs. Lieutenant to one lucky reader. I am pleased to announce that the winner is…
Bethany from B&b exlibris
Congratulations, Bethany!
Please send me an email with your mailing address and I’ll forward that on to Phyllis. Also let me know if you’d be interested in discussing the book afterwards with me. It could be a lot of fun and we can work out a way to coordinate things on both of our blogs.
A special thanks to all those who entered. Please keep an eye out on my blog for upcoming contests. I know that in August I will have a contest to win a copy of Gilding Lily as well as another contest to win a signed copy of Matrimony from Joshua Henkin, when the novel is released in paperback. And you never know when the mood will strike me to dust off my bulging bookshelves…
Getting with the Program
When I first started blogging and reading other people’s blogs, my friend Trista gave me a copy of her Bloglines. I used it for a while, but it seemed to get out of hand for me. I decided it was best to rely on bookmarks, sticky notes, history, and my memory to follow the blogs I read on a regular basis. So, how was that working for me? Not very well. I would go to blogs I loved once a month and be all behind the times. Then I had the brilliant idea to add links to this blog, figuring I would visit each once a day or once every other day at the most. It sounded like a good idea, but other than not losing URLs, I haven’t been doing much better than before.
I still resisted creating subscriptions for one reason or another until I started having trouble getting to Devourer of Books’ blog. The withdrawals are too much for me. Today I’ve broken down and set up Google Reader. I’m looking forward for keeping up much better with everyone’s blogs from now on! Now, if I could only leave comments…
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I see that today is Devourer of Books’ read-a-thon day. Go Jen! I’ll be sending my money in the mail on Monday. I think it’s great that you’re supporting RIF. I just wish I could leave a comment on your blog!
BTT What Makes a Reader?
What, in your opinion, is the definition of a “reader.” A person who indiscriminately reads everything in sight? A person who reads BOOKS? A person who reads, period, no matter what it is? … Or, more specific? Like the specific person who’s reading something you wrote?
What makes a reader a reader? To be honest, this isn’t something I’ve ever really thought about. My gut reaction to this question is that a reader is anyone who can read in their native language. Really, that definition speaks to a person’s ability to read. It doesn’t take into consideration that person’s interest in reading. I call myself a reader, but that is because I like to read and I spend most of my free time reading. On the other hand, although I enjoy making homemade cards and creating things with stamps, I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a stamper. I dabble in stamping, it’s not my passion. Would I be wrong calling myself a stamper? I’m note sure, but that gets to the heart of our question today.
If someone walked up to me and described his or herself as a reader, it would prompt me to ask questions like:
What do you like to read?
What types of books/publications do you like to read?
Who are your favorite authors?
What are you reading right now?
Have you read The Monsters of Templeton? I love it! It’s simply amazing!
It would not make me think about them simply as a literate person. I guess I automatically assume that most adults have at least a basic reading level. I know that this is not always the case and that adult illiteracy is a problem that we face. But, that does point out that I really do define a reader as someone who enjoys reading something or at least thinks that doing so is important.
Those who read what I write professionally, whether that be user manuals, system requirements, software design specifications, or even emails, are my readers. I think about their background and even their personalities when I’m writing for them, but outside of the business world, I try not to think about them at all. 
More often than not my professional audience chooses not to read what I’ve written for them. I find that they’d rather be walked through the software in person or over the phone. Those who actually do read what I’ve written typically scan through the documentation. They are not careful readers at all. They are like those who choose to read The Old Man and the Sea through Cliff Notes. They don’t take the time to fully comprehend the documentation or even think that doing so is important. They just want to be able to give the impression that they have if they’re ever asked about it directly. Those who read my documentation thoroughly and challenge concepts and facts really are my readers. They push me to improve my writing and make my job enjoyable. I get the most job satisfaction when I know that I’ve made someone else’s job easier or make sense by what I’ve written.
Of course, the best readers in the whole world are those who read The Literate Housewife Review and other things I’ve written for myself. I’m blessed to have each and every one of you. Creating and nurturing this blog is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I am so thankful to Danny, Trista, and Mark for encouraging me to write and for being my role models.
So, are you a reader?
Out of Whack
Do you get any indication of how my week is going based on the fact that I just now realized that today is Thursday instead of Wednesday? All day yesterday I prided myself on remembering to do my Tuesday Thingers post on Tuesday – only to now realize that I was really a day late and a dollar short. 
Now that I know that it’s Thursday, I need to head over to Booking Through Thursday to find out what our topic is today. Last week’s question was great, but I never got a chance to write it. This week I’m going to try much harder.
I hope that everyone else out there is more organized and aware of the calendar than I am! Be thankful I’m not in charge of keeping the world on track.
Tuesday Thingers Uniquely Mine
Last week I asked what was the most popular book in your library- this week I’m going to ask about the most unpopular books you own. Do you have any unique books in your library- books only you have on LT? How many? Did you find cataloging information on your unique books, or did you hand-enter them? Do they fall into a particular category or categories, or are they a mix of different things? Have you ever looked at the “You and none other” feature on your statistics page, which shows books owned by only you and one other user? Ever made an LT friend by seeing what you share with only one other user?
I have cataloged three books that are uniquely mine so far as LibraryThing is concerned. The first is a book I purchased in Berlin that contains pictures of the Berlin Wall art before the wall came down. Since the Berlin Wall fell during my senior year of high school, I feel a connection to that event and that made me an easy sell for that book. The other two books, Dragonmede by Rona Rondall and Henry VIII – A Study of Power in Action by John Bowle. I bought both of those books at a library book sale. I pick up a lot of older historical fiction and non-fiction about the Tudors that way. I’m wondering now if Dragonmede is any good… Maybe someday I’ll find out.
I find the You and No Other feature on LibraryThing the most interesting. I love that feature. I own a book of postcards from Grand Rapids through the years and only one other user owns that. I figure that this user must have some connection to my home town, but he or she never responded to my comment. That being said, I’ve made quite a few LT friends based upon more than one book in common and that’s the most important thing.
Win a Free Copy of Mrs. Lieutenant!
Phyllis Zimbler Miller has graciously offered a copy of her novel to one of my lucky readers in conjunction with the blog tour stop today. I would have posted about this earlier, but my daughter nearly broke her finger at day care today and I spent much of the day with her at doctor’s offices. Thankfully, she is okay and sleeping peacefully.
Anyway, to the contest…
To win a free copy of Mrs. Lieutenant, all you have to do is comment on my review or this post (if you already have, you’re good). If you link to this contest on your blog, you’ll get a second entry. If I get more than 20 entries, I’ll throw in a second copy. So encourage all your literate friends to sign up, it won’t hurt to enter and it may just increase your odds.
I’ll hold the drawing on Monday, June 30th at 5pm.
I would be extremely excited if the winner would be interested in talking with me about the book afterward. As I mentioned in my review, this is one book that I really feel compelled to talk about. If you win the book and have read it, I would love to call you, and I would post the interview on my blog. It would be a great way to have a discussion. No pressure, though. I’d respect anyone who would prefer not to.
Good luck to everyone!!!
#81 Mrs. Lieutenant
Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel
A special thanks to Lisa from Books on the Brain for hooking me up with this book and the blog tour and to Phyllis Zimbler Miller for sending me a copy of this book.
Mrs. Lieutenant tells the story of four very different newlywed women who share only one thing in common – their husbands are in training to become officers in the United States Army at Ft. Knox during the Vietnam War. Robert and Sharon Gold are a Jewish couple from Chicago, Kim and Jim Benton are a Southern Baptist couple from North Carolina, Wendy and Nelson Johnson are a black couple from South Carolina, and Donna and Jerry Lautenberg are a bi-racial couple. Donna is Puerto Rican whereas Jerry is Caucasian. Chance brings them together, but after forming the entertainment committee for the graduation luncheon for the wives of new officers, they learn that what makes each of them different provides them all the strength they need to prepare for their husbands’ possible deployment to Vietnam and the years of marriage to come.
Sharon Gold is the main character of this novel. She grew up in a Jewish family in Chicago. Instead of attending a more liberal school, she chose to study at Michigan State University. It is there that her support for the anti-war demonstrations held on campus that led to her chance meeting with Robert, a member of MSU’s ROTC. Robert was unlike most of his fellow ROTC cadets: he was Jewish and he quoted poetry. Much to Sharon’s own surprise, she falls in love and marries a soldier committed to doing his patriotic duty by serving as an officer in the Army. Sharon struggles not only with her beliefs about her country’s war in Vietnam, but with the prejudice she and her husband have and will continue to face as Jews.
Kim Benton never left North Carolina until she and her husband crossed over the Virginia border on their way to Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Kim grew up in the foster care system after the tragic death of her impoverished parents. She loves her husband, who has big dreams for his future in the military, but leaving her sister behind is not something that comes easy for her. As the older of the siblings, she feels a great deal of responsibility toward her sister. To her, Kentucky is a world away from North Carolina and she clings to her husband for dear life. She dearly needs to be and feel loved, no matter what her jealous husband might put her through.
Wendy Johnson grew up in South Carolina as the only child of doctor and his wife in South Carolina. Although there was a great deal of prejudice encountered by black Americans living in the South, Wendy’s parents sheltered her from it, almost excessively. It was only after she met and married Nelson that the curtain was parted for her and she began to see the challenges that her husband faced his entire life. In addition to facing the world with her eyes wide open, Wendy also has to come to terms with her parents’ reservations about her husband and his chosen career. The trip from being a doctor’s daughter to living in a mobile home was shocking for her.
Donna Lautenberg grew up as an Army brat. Her father made a career as an enlisted man in the Army. She moved from place to place throughout her childhood following her father’s career. Although she lived in a loving family, she always felt less than her classmates and other army brats because of her nationality. When she caught the eye of her husband, she faced this fear head-on, concerned that her in-laws wanted and expected more (i.e. blond, blue-eyed, American) in a daughter-in-law. Coming to Ft. Knox as an officer’s wife is a culture shock for her. Although she spent all of her life in the army, the life of enlisted families, officers were an entire class altogether.
This novel is as much about prejudice as it is about learning to be an officer’s wife. The unlikely grouping of these women definitely bring this out. While the experiences of each of these women during that time in history felt very realistic to a reader who had not even been conceived yet, there was also a part of this that rubbed me the wrong way. Kim, as the white representative of the group who was also from the South, was singled out from among the group as the one person who actually held prejudice. While her upbringing led her to be distrustful of those who were different from her, Kim’s views of other broadened along with her experiences. Sharon, who was keenly perceptive of Kim’s original beliefs, seemed to miss Kim’s growth. For someone more educated, I found it discouraging that Sharon continued to put Kim in a box like that while being entirely oblivious to her own prejudices against Southerners. There were several statements she made about Kim that, if you substituted the word “black” for “Southerner,” could have been Sharon’s own. This really bothered me as I was finishing up the novel, but it also made me think. No one is perfect. Not every prejudice is as blatant or as perceptively ugly as racism and antisemitism. Education and experiencing discrimination first hand does not preclude someone from holding their own prejudices.
What I enjoyed the most about this novel was the experiences of these women as they learned how to be an Army officer’s wife during the early 1970s from watching others and by reading “Mrs. Lieutenant,” a book published to provide instruction on being a lady in the United States Army. The book, in a way, provided officer’s wives with their own form of boot camp. Instead of experienced soldiers screaming down their necks when they made mistakes, they get the cold shoulder or bemused glances from their elders. I found it interesting what was expected of a married woman not that long ago. Times have certainly changed.
My advise to you is to read this book in a club or with someone else. It is fast and the larger font size makes it easy to read. I would have loved to have read this book in a reading group. Just as with women of Mrs. Lieutenant, it would have been good to have people from all different walks of life discuss some of the topics that were brought up. Reading this book alone in a suite at the Palazzo in Las Vegas might sound glamorous (and it sure was luxurious!), but I was frustrated with having no one with whom to talk about these issues. Thankfully a couple of book blogging buddies pinch hit for me when I emailed about this book.
Where would we be without our friends?
You can download discussion guidelines directly from the book’s homepage.
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To buy this novel, click here
#80 Matrimony
This novel tells the story of Julian Wainwright, an only son from a well-to-do family. At the beginning, we meet Julian as a young man beginning his college and writing career at Graymont College, a liberal arts college that both gets him away from his parents and, to a certain extent, disappoints them at the same time. In his creative writing class, Julian meets Carter. The two are singled out by Professor Chesterfield as the stars of the class and they soon become friends. Carter grew up without those things that Julian took for granted, and no matter how close they become, there is always this socio-economic barrier between them.
Friendship and a trusted relationship with Professor Chesterfield are not the only things that Julian finds at Graymont College. It is there, while doing laundry, that Julian meets and falls in love with Mia Mendelsohn. Although the two both come from families with money, there are many differences between their experiences. Mia’s parents are quite liberal whereas Julian’s are more conservative. Mia’s family holds education and philosophical pursuits in high esteem whereas Julian’s takes pride in its corporate success. These differences, just like those that exist between Julian and Carter, don’t really manifest themselves in a meaningful way until a medical tragedy strikes. It is then that they do their best to continue moving forward, sometimes at cross purposes. It is also during that time that Julian and Mia jump into marriage feet first, but it takes them years to discover what marriage is all about.
Matrimony is about the meaning of friendship and marriage. It is about learning how to live and how to be forgiving. It is also about leading a writer’s life. Julian discovered his dream to write at an early age and never lets it go. In many ways, he is more faithful and understanding of his craft than he is of his wife and his best friend. He doesn’t truly grow as a writer, a man, or a human being, though, until he learns and accepts that he can’t control his writing anymore than he can any other relationship in his life.
I enjoyed the time I spent with the characters who inhabit Matrimony. They are flawed, but they are vulnerable. They suffer for their mistakes, even if they try desperately to act as if they didn’t make any in the first place. I also enjoyed the sub-plot of Julian as a writer. His experiences in writing workshops reminds me of times when my own work was being discussed. Workshops can be brutal, but they can be magical, too. In Matrimony, Joshua Henkin sheds a light on the hard work, commitment and energy required to be a friend, a lover, and a writer. I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to thoughtfully explore any of those things.
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To buy this novel, click here
Book Blogger Con
Have you heard about the 1st Annual Book Blogger Convention that will be held in NYC during the BEA? You should check it out. I know it will be a fantastic experience. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend due to family obligations, but I'll be trolling blogs for up to the minute news.
WE Magazine’s A Woman Blogger to Watch
Literate Challenges
What's in a Name? 3
Random Reading Challenge
