Lovely Books and Things - 7.10.22

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update

Linking up with:
Mailbox Monday (details)
Stacking the Shelves (details)
Sunday Post (details)
Sunday Salon (details)

~*~

HAPPY THINGS:

1. Browsing at a local needlework shop, San Francisco School of Needlework & Design (here)
2. Enjoying a Hot Fudge Sundae from Ghiradelli Square (here)
3. Coming close to the end of the Stitching Book Club Narnia cross stitch project

~*~
Bought:

The Spanish Love Deception
by Elena Armas
Contemporary, Romance, New Adult | Published: 2021 | Goodreads
Library: audiobook

Murder in Montmartre
by Cara Black
Mystery, Paris | Published: 2007 | Goodreads
for Paris in July (details)

The Wolf and the Watchman
by Niklas Natt Och Dag
Mystery, Historical, Sweden | Published: 2017 | Goodreads
Library:

Deck the Donuts
by Ginger Bolton
Mystery, Cozy, Christmas, Cat, Wisconsin | Published: 2021 | Goodreads
Happy Christmas in July!
~*~
Virtual Author event: hosted by SF Public Library
See archive of this (here)

Last Night at the Telegraph Club
by Malinda Lo
Historical, LGBTQ, YA | Published: 2021 | Goodreads
Virtual Author event: hosted by bookreporter
See archive of this (here)

The Shore
by Katie Runde
Contemporary, Romance, LGBTQ, Summer, Jersey shore | Published: 2022 | Goodreads
~*~
AND watched: theatre

Don't Make Me Go (2022)
Director: Hannah Marks
Writer: Vera Herbert
Stars: John Cho, Mia Isaac
Drama | imdb | my rating: 4
tugs at the heart
When a single father to a teenage daughter learns that he has a fatal brain tumor, he takes her on a road trip to find the mother who abandoned her years before and to try to teach her everything she might need over the rest of her life.

Elvis (2022)
Director/Screnplay: Baz Luhrmann
Screenplay: Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, Jeremy Doner
Stars: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge
Biography, Drama, Music | imdb | my rating: 5
stick around for the end credits to hear more of the incredible soundtrack
and see beautiful artwork which (I think) may have been inspired by Elvis and
his array of bejeweled buckles and belts
Elvis is Baz Luhrmann's biopic of Elvis Presley, from his childhood to becoming a rock and movie star in the 1950s while maintaining a complex relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

~*~
* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Books and Bag: Risky

Books and Bag
doing some dreaming
a designer bag and books to fill it

Counterfeit
by Kirsten Chen
Contemporary, Mystery, Asian American | Published: 2022 | Goodreads

Money can't buy happiness... but it can buy a decent fake.

Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home--she's built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava's world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn't been used in years, and her toddler's tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.

Enter Winnie Fang, Ava's enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business--someone who'd never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.

Cover Story
by Susan Rigetti
Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller | Published: 2022 | Goodreads

After a rough year at NYU, aspiring writer Lora Ricci is thrilled to land a summer internship at ELLE magazine where she meets Cat Wolff, contributing editor and enigmatic daughter of a clean-energy mogul. Cat takes Lora under her wing, soliciting her help with side projects and encouraging her writing.

As a friendship emerges between the two women, Lora opens up to Cat about her desperate struggles and lost scholarship. Cat's solution: Drop out of NYU and become her ghostwriter. Lora agrees and, when the internship ends, she moves into Cat's suite at the opulent Plaza Hotel. Writing during the day and accompanying Cat to extravagant parties at night, Lora's life quickly shifts from looming nightmare to dream-come-true. But as Lora is drawn into Cat's glamorous lifestyle, Cat's perfect exterior cracks, exposing an illicit, shady world.

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* image source: bag -Louis Vuitton from Summer Stardust Collection

Meet Mr. Malcolm

Mr. Malcolm's List
by Suzanne Allain
Historical, Romance, Regency | Published: 2020 | Goodreads | my rating: 4
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an arrogant bachelor insistent on a wife who meets the strictest of requirements--deserves his comeuppance.

The Honorable Jeremy Malcolm is searching for a wife, but not just any wife. He's determined to elude the fortune hunters and find a near-perfect woman, one who will meet the qualifications on his well-crafted list. But after years of searching, he's beginning to despair of finding this paragon. And then Selina Dalton arrives in town...

Selina, a vicar's daughter of limited means and a stranger to high society, is thrilled when her friend Julia invites her to London. Until she learns it's part of a plot to exact revenge on Mr. Malcolm. Selina is reluctant to participate in Julia's scheme, especially after meeting the irresistible Mr. Malcolm, who seems very different from the arrogant scoundrel of Julia's description.

But when Mr. Malcolm begins judging Selina against his unattainable standards, Selina decides that she has qualifications of her own. And if he is to meet them he must reveal the real man behind...Mr. Malcolm's List.

~*~

Mr. Malcolm's List (2022)
Director: Emma Holly Jones
Screenplay: Suzanne Allain
Based on book by: Suzanne Allain
Stars: Freida Pinto, Sope Dirisu
Comedy, Drama, Romance | imdb | my rating: 5
stick around for the end credits which includes
an epilogue done with fun illustrations
A young woman courts a mysterious wealthy suitor in 19th century England.

Lovely Books and Things - 7.3.22

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update

Linking up with:
Mailbox Monday (details)
Stacking the Shelves (details)
Sunday Post (details)
Sunday Salon (details)

~*~

HAPPY THINGS:

1. Planning a road trip
2. Found Stitching Parlor: Jane Austen themed cross stitch patterns at Acorns and Threads (here) -call and ask for patterns as they are not listed on the site
3. Colorful ferris wheel in Golden Gate Park - it's lit!

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Gift: thanks, M!

The Paris Bookseller
by Kerri Maher
Historical, Paris, France | Published: 2022 | Goodreads
just in time for Paris in July (details)

Borrowed: thanks, S!

Bellasia: Once Upon a Tea
by Mercedes Wadkins and Sara Coats
Children's | Published: 2016 | Goodreads

For Review:

Mother Country
by Jacinda Townsend
Contemporary, Feminism, Africa | Published: May 3, 2022 | Goodreads
courtesy of publisher -Thanks!
~*~
Virtual Author event: hosted by Green Apple Books
See archive of this (here)

Lapvona
by Ottessa Moshfegh
Historical, Horror, Magical Realism | Published: 2022 | Goodreads
Virtual Author event: hosted by Book Passage
See archive of this (here)

Elsewhere
by Alexis Schaitkin
Dystopia | Published: 2022 | Goodreads
~*~
AND watched: Netflix

Love and Gelato (2022)
Director/Writer: Brandon Camp
Based on book: Jenna Evans Welch
Stars: Susanna Skaggs, Tobia De Angelis, Owen McDonnell
Comedy, Drama, Romance, Rome, Italy | imdb | my rating: 4
sweet summer romance and coming of age
Lina makes a promise to her sick mother that she'll spend the summer before college in Rome, where she falls for the city, the people - and the "gelato".


~*~
* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Rabbit rabbit: Rabbits

Rabbits
by Terry Miles
SciFi, Thriller | Published: 2021 | Goodreads
Conspiracies abound in this surreal and yet all-too-real technothriller in which a deadly underground alternate reality game might just be altering reality itself, set in the same world as the popular Rabbits podcast.

It's an average work day. You've been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air—4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th—4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?

Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. Players have died in the past—and the body count is rising.

And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K—a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, the alleged winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts or the whole world will pay the price.

Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline and Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake.