Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Surprise New Reads!

How surprised I was to go to  my mailbox on Friday and find these two signed copies of Pamela Foster's books waiting for me.  She even included a couple of post cards. And, all I did was make a comment on her blog, that she found favorable.
I haven't had the opportunity to read Pamela's books, but they sure look interesting. I have a brother that actually spend some time in  Costa Rica and was considered a Gringo by the locals and my father-in-law was a WW2 Vet. So, I expect to really enjoy these two books.
Have you had the opportunity to read any of her work?


Clueless Gringos in Paradise_rev3-front

The comments following the books are from either Amazon or from Pamela's blog:

 My husband, Jack, and I sit in our recliners – you know, the ones you see on TV with old people in them – and watch CNN while we pet the fur-covered, 150-pound trunkless elephants we call dogs, and contemplate another winter in the high desert of Arizona.
“You know what?” I ask rhetorically.
Jack doesn’t answer. We’ve been married long enough that, first of all, he knows one of my lead-ins to a discussion about our lives when he hears it and, secondly, he’s trained his brain to simply filter out nine-tenths of what comes floating out of my mouth.
Knowing this, with no encouragement whatsoever, I continue, “It feels like we’re just sitting here waiting to die.”
He turns his head and looks at me.
A minute later, he says, “Yeah. It does, doesn’t it?”
After breakfast, I say, “Let’s move to someplace green and warm with a beautiful blue ocean.”
This, right here, turns out to be the equivalent of saying, “I’ll bet we could strap these two giant dogs to our backs and just leap right across that rocky abyss over yonder. Don’t worry about those loose boulders. We’ll be fine.”
Why would I even consider such a thing? Because Jack’s my hero, and he came into my life when I really needed a hero.
From the dry Arizona desert to tropical Panama, Foster shares the adventures she experienced traveling with her Vietnam veteran husband with PTSD and their two gigantic service dogs. By weaving charm, wit, and humor throughout the story, Foster masterfully brings to light the daily challenges faced by veterans with PTSD and their spouses. Insightful, endearing, funny yet sad, Clueless Gringos in Paradise brings understanding and hope to all those who deal with the unseen wounds and scars of war.”
~ R.H. Burkett, author of Soldiers in the Mist


When night falls on another Veterans Day, when the leftover chicken waits in plastic tubs for a quick breakfast the next morning, and the confetti is swept from the streets, and the flags are folded in tight triangles; when the holiday ends, most of us get on with our lives. But for those warriors who carried an M14 along a jungle trail, who patrolled the streets of Fullujah or Bagdad, who developed the skills to survive and return to us, for those combat-seasoned men and women, life does not exactly just go on. My Life with a Wounded Warrior is the true story of the joys, challenges, and lessons of living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. This collection of deeply honest personal essays shares Pamela Foster's twenty-five years of living with and loving a combat Marine, a veteran of Vietnam. With humor and love and respect, as well as with frustration and anger and sadness, Foster lifts the curtain on the true cost, the individual cost of war, and gives hope and joy and laughter to those who love their own wounded warrior. The author will donate $3 from the sale of each book to Freedom Dogs, an organization which provides PTSD service dogs to combat veterans.

To view more of Pamela's books , please select the link here.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge - U




For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to
highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

The kind and every so diligent readers in our  facebook , book club, "What to read Next?", came through for me again, with their reading suggestions.
So without further ado.

U is for Urquart, Jane - Sanctuary Line


 

From Amazon:
Set in the present day on a farm at the shores of Lake Erie, Jane Urquhart's stunning new novel weaves elements from the nineteenth-century past, in Ireland and Ontario, into a gradually unfolding contemporary story of events in the lives of the members of one family that come to alter their futures irrevocably. There are ancestral lighthouse-keepers, seasonal Mexican workers; the migratory patterns and survival techniques of the Monarch butterfly; the tragedy of a young woman's death during a tour of duty in Afghanistan; three very different but equally powerful love stories. Jane Urquhart brings to vivid life the things of the past that make us who we are, and reveals the sometimes difficult path to understanding and forgiveness.


If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link,  What to Read Next?

Also considered: 
Uris, Leon - The Haj

Friday, April 12, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - L



For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to
highlight some of the authors and their books, that
we, in our book club, have either read, as a group,

separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook group.



L is for Lam, Vincent - Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures




From Amazon:

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures welcomes readers into a world where the most mundane events can quickly become life or death. By following four young medical students and physicians – Ming, Fitz, Sri and Chen – this debut collection from 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam is a riveting, eye-opening account of what it means to be a doctor. Deftly navigating his way through 12 interwoven short stories, the author explores the characters’ relationships with each other, their patients, and their careers. Lam draws on his own experience as an emergency room physician and shares an insider’s perspective on the fears, frustrations, and responsibilities linked with one of society’s most highly regarded occupations. 

There were mixed feelings among our book club about this book. But those who liked it 'really' liked it.  I guess it's one of those books, you'll have to read for yourself to decide.


If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club
Please, select the link, What To Read Next?

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 -B




For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to 
highlight some of the authors that we, in our book
club, have either read, as a group, separately, or have
been suggested,to us, from our on-line book club. 


B is for Bohjalian, Chris



This book was suggested by our on-line group.Thought I haven't actually read it, it sounds like one I would enjoy.


From Amazon:

The time is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for fifteen years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency Caesarean section on its mother, who appears to have died in labor. But what if--as Sibyl's assistant later charges--the patient wasn't already dead, and it was Sibyl who inadvertently killed her?

As recounted by Sibyl's precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, the ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt except for the fact that all its participants are acting from the highest motives--and the defendant increasingly appears to be guilty. As Sibyl Danforth faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do.


If you'd like to check out or join our on-line book club, please select the link What To Read Next.

Also considered:

Boo, Catherine - Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Behrens, Peter - Law of Dreams

Monday, April 1, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - A

                    

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to
highlight some of the authors and their books, that

we, in our book club, have either read, as a group,

separately  or have been recommended by someone

in our on-line group.


        A big "Thank You" goes out to ARLEE BIRD for 

making this A to Z April Challenge possible!
        

Armstrong, Sally


This was one of our favourites, since our small actual meeting group is from New Brunswick, this was 'close to home' for us.!


From Indigo:

Charlotte Taylor lived in the front row of history. In
1775, at the young age of twenty, she fled her 
English country house and boarded a ship to Jamaica 
with her lover, the family's black butler. Soon after
reaching shore, Charlotte's lover died of yellow fever,
leaving her alone and pregnant in Jamaica. In the
sixty-six years that followed, she would find refuge
with the Mi'kmaq of what is present-day New 
Brunswick, have three husbands, nine more children 
and a lifelong relationship with an aboriginal man.
Using a seamless blend of fact and fiction, Charlotte
Taylor''s great-great-great-granddaughter, Sally
Armstrong, reclaims the life of a dauntless and 
unusual woman and delivers living history with all the 
drama and sweep of a novel.

If you'd like to check out or join our on-line book club

please select the link, What to Read Next


Also considered:

Austin, Jane - Persuasion

Agawa, Joko - The Housekeeper