My 2013 Recap: The Year in Books

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

I know this blog has been quiet for a while, and I'm sorry for that. Work has been super stressful and busy, and my blogging and reading has fallen by the wayside lately. I'm going to try my best to post on a more regular basis in 2014, but I'm trying not to put too much pressure on myself about it, because that will just make me stressed, and take the fun out of it. Melissa's Midnight Musings also turned 2 back on December 14th. I didn't forget, I just haven't had time to make a post, but I am going to be putting together some sort of giveaway to celebrate that soon.

Last year for my 2012 recap I listed all the books I had read by month with links to their reviews. I'm not going to do that this year, but I will list some statistics, and I did spend part of today updating my review archive page.

I've read a few books lately that haven't been reviewed here on the blog, and I'm not sure whether I will be reviewing them or not.

Seeing as I failed to meet any of my challenges for this year, (getting a full time job has kicked my butt) I've decided that this year I am not going to participate in any sort of genre specific challenges. I have a hard time keeping track of all that (even with my excel list) and I have very limited time on work days to remember to update it (3 hours of my day is devoted toward commute time, which leaves very little time for blogging or keeping up with those kinds of challenges.) I'm just going to keep things simple with a book goal, pages goal, and my continuing journey to read 1 million pages in my lifetime. I'll be back tomorrow with those specific goals to start off 2014, but now lets take a look at 2013 in review

2013 Bookish Stats:

Total Books Read: 52

Total Pages Read: 11,912

Total Number of Different Authors Read: 53 (Some books had multiple authors)

Shortest Book Read: Writing Great Emails Is Not Art: 9 Ways To Get There 9 pages

Longest Book Read: Sunlounger 692 Pages

Average Rating of Books: 3.38 Stars

Number of 5 Star Rated Books Read: 6
Average Length of Book Read: 229 Pages

That's my year in books in a nutshell. How was your 2013 reading year?
 I'm looking forward to jumping in to 2014. Be sure to stop by tomorrow to see what my goals are, and please feel free to share your goals too!

Review: The Old Rectory: Escape To A Country Kitchen

Hello everyone!

Welcome to my stop on the tour for The Old Rectory: Escape to a Country Kitchen. See what I thought of the book below.

Title: The Old Rectory: Escape to a Country Kitchen

Author: Julia Ibbotson

Publisher: New Generation Publishing

Published: August 22 2011

Format: Paperback

Pages: 128

Source: Received from the author in exchange for an honest review.

My Rating:  3 Stars

Synopsis:

When author Julia Ibbotson and her husband first saw the old Victorian rectory in dire need of renovation, a mile out of the nearest village in the midst of the English moorlands, they fell in love with it and the lifestyle it represented, with its farmhouse kitchen range at its heart. This delightful memoir describes the trials and tribulations of their quest to make their vision come true. They hoped they could make the sad, neglected house glow again and that they could integrate themselves into the small traditional village, with its cottages, hall and outlying farms. The Old Rectory focuses on the centrality of the kitchen as the pulse of the family and home, and shows the importance of food and cooking throughout the changing seasons, history and moods of the countryside as the couple strive to live the dream. 

Melissa's Musings:

This book is a nice look at the personal history of the author with some historical points mixed in. The book has a mostly easy going simple style. 

I most enjoyed the different recipes that the author provided for each of their seasons in the rectory. It was also nice to read about a more simplistic life in the country. I'm a city girl at heart, and always will be, but it's always nice to see the other side of things. I have to say that life in the country seems to have a very unique set of challenges.

There was a lot of history involving the rectory that the author purchased. And while this was a nice balance to the personal anecdotes, I have to admit that at times the historical portions did get confusing. I think there was just too much to it. There were a few too many people mentioned, in ties with the house, and all of the documentation and so forth. 

Of course, my preference were for all of the delicious recipes, but I think this book would be a hit with anyone who likes to learn about historic places or anyone who likes memoirs.

About The Author:

Julia Ibbotson is the award-winning author of The Old Rectory: Escape to a Country Kitchen, first published to acclaim in the USA and now re-launched with a brand-new cover by her new English publisher in the UK. Julia has been writing creatively all her life (unpublished!) but her day jobs to pay the mortgage have been as a school teacher and latterly a university academic, gaining her PhD at the age of 57. She delights in being a wife and mother to four, with four little grandchildren. She loves reading, gardening, growing food, cooking for family and friends and country life. Having published many academic texts and papers, she came late to actually publishing her creative writing, at the age of 60 plus, when she was persuaded to write the story of the renovation of her Victorian rectory in The Old Rectory. She has combined memoir, history, research, story and recipes in this first published book, which has won a number of international book festivals in the biography category, gained 5 star reviews on Amazon, and has been widely featured (along with her house) in the media. She has begun to delve into the world of blogging, facebook and now has her own website at www.juliaibbotson.com  at which she also posts blogs regularly, about writing, life and her passions. Her new project is a trilogy of novels following the life story of a new character, Jess, through from fleeing to West Africa as a volunteer teacher/nurse in the 1960s to the millennium. The first of the series, Drumbeats, is due to be published later this year. You can find out more on her website and on her author page on Amazon.

Connect & Socialize with Julia!

TWITTER| FACEBOOK| YOUTUBE

Review: The Man With the Green Suitcase

Title: The Man With the Green Suitcase

Author: Dee Doanes

Publisher: Wld Enterprises

Published: July 30, 2012

Format: Kindle

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 328 pages

Source: Received from the author

in exchange for an honest review

Read: December 31, 2012-January 2, 2013 

In  A Few Words: Unusual 

My Rating: 2 Stars

Goodreads: Add This To Your TBR Shelf

Goodreads Synopsis: What does... 

A prostitute, 

A corrupt businessman,and 

A disfigured young woman 

Have in common with a mysterious, old homeless man who carries a green suitcase? 

The old man comes into people’s lives because it is important for them to experience the visions that he is somehow able to show them—visions that even he doesn’t understand. But whoever he connects with will go through a transformation that will change the course of their life, for better or worse. The old man has no memory of who he is or even what the suitcase holds. But one day he will find out all about his own secret and dark past… 

This story is magical realism, realistic with paranormal elements, a mystery that needs to be solved, and a man and woman who will finally realize that they were meant to come into each other’s lives and remain forever

Melissa's Musings:

The overall concept of this book is really interesting. There's a homeless man who wanders the streets, stopping by a local shelter to get food and a shower, once a week. While there he's connected with several different people, some good, some bad, and he shares visions with them. This man doesn't remember who he is or his past and is pretty much a loner, all he knows is that he must pass on the visions to the people they are intended for.

 The interesting thing about this is the way the visions come about. When he is with someone and needs to pass along one of these visions, the energy builds up inside him, and the wrinkles on his face start to change. The energy buildup shines through the man as light. 

Of course this special ability makes people want to be around him even more, but he tends to shut people out and do his own thing. There are lots of other characters, but I don't want to talk much about them because I'll give away major plot points if I do. The main focus is on the man with the green suitcase and it's his visions that tie all of the characters in the book together. All of his visions do come true, in one form or another.

As interesting as this part of the plot is, I feel that the writing could have been a lot more polished to help pull the reader into the story more. The writing is somewhat stilted in places. It also feels like the descriptions are somewhat cluttered. I find it odd to be saying that there are too many details given, but that's what this felt like. It just feels like the author is trying too hard to set up the scene for the reader, and that leads the cluttered descriptions and halts the flow. Instead of flowing naturally, these overly descriptive passages feel clunky.

There are a few other weak spots in the structure that pull you away from the reading as well. The book switches tenses often, even in the middle of paragraphs. There are also a lot of instances of repetitive phrasing throughout the story, sometimes one right after the other. There's a section where the story alternates between Valerie and Gerald and they mirror phrases almost exactly, one right after the other. Sometimes this can work, but it didn't quite work here. The alternations with headings, in the middle of chapters was also unsettling. I think that if the story had simply been told from their perspective for the whole chapter it would have been better than alternating between them in the same chapter. 

Also, in a lot of sections there are sequences that I think are meant to be told as flashbacks which are all italicized. A few of these interspersed throughout the story would have been okay, but there are several and they are quite distracting.

One element of the book that I really enjoyed was the aspect of volunteerism. The author did a good job of really making it so that you can understand how life as a homeless person can be. It was nice to see characters who really enjoyed volunteering and helping others. There is also a character with mental illness in the story and while there was some description of that, it would have been nice to see that issue touched on a bit more thoroughly, in order to be able to better relate to Valerie's character.

The ending itself made no sense to me. The book was so focused on the man with the green suitcase and his power, that the buildup to his back story and his whole reason for being the way he was felt rushed, and it wasn't revealed until the very end, so I didn't have as strong feelings for him as I might have had I learned more about him sooner. The ending fell flat for me, due to lack of character development. 

The story is described as magical realism, and I feel that it was too focused on the magical part to really connect to it.