Love Letters to the World by Meia Geddes

Love Letters to the World
by Meia Geddes

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Published: 2016
Publisher: Poetose Press
Genre: Poetry
ebook
Rating: 4

First sentence(s):
My dear world, There is something sunny and blue about you.

A series of 120 lyrical missives addressing the world as body, concept, stranger. This is a quiet celebration and exploration of life, love, language, and one's place in the world.

My two-bits:

This is a collection of lovely letters that speaks from the heart to the world. Inner reflections are shared that bring about an awareness on each topic presented.

~*~
* review copy courtesy of author

Amy's Story by Anna Lawton

Amy's Story
by Anna Lawton

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Release date: March 7, 2017
Publisher: New Academia Publishing
Genre: Historical, Women's Fiction
Hardback: 246 pages
Rating: 3

First sentence(s):
“Mulberry and Canal, please.”

The cabbie looks at her in the rearview mirror while the car pulls off into the Broadway traffic.

Amy’s Story unfolds on the background of American history, from the late 60’s up until 2011, and takes us through the timeline of how Italian-native Amy (full name, America) creates her success story.

Amy experiences love, heartbreak, friendship, obstacles, success, and more as she moves from Italy to New York City to live by her American father. Following in her father’s footsteps, Amy becomes a successful publisher. Her story intertwines with the story of Stella, her childhood friend, whose unfinished memoir she intends to publish. As Amy edits the manuscript, it is Stella’s story that readers follow as she leaves Italy with her American lover, Jim, a heartthrob who conceals his sensitive nature under a bravado façade, and goes through career achievements and setbacks, and a heartbreaking love story.

Her journey runs parallel to major American historical events―the Vietnam War, student protests and the Kent State shooting, the birth of radicalism and feminism, presidential elections and assassinations, immigration, the Watergate scandal, up to the 9/11 attack and beyond― providing an interesting commentary on the facts that influenced the development of American society over the past 40 years and brought about the current outcome.

Other minor, but captivating, characters complete the picture and sustain the action: Steve, Stella’s husband, conformist and uninspiring; Nik, a passionate and extravagant Russian intellectual; Rosa, once a maid at Amy’s grandmother’s country estate and now married to the owner of a New York pizzeria; and others.

Stella's memoir never gets published, because Amy transforms it into a very successful novel. This twist will have readers reimagining the entire story and Amy and Stella’s tale will remain with them for a long time.

My two-bits:

This story spans the 1930s to the present. Through Stella's life and loves you get glimpses into different eras by way of significant American political historical happenings.

The start is an Italian immigrant experience which I found to be the most interesting.

~*~
* review copy courtesy of publisher

Independent Bookstore Day

Independent Bookstore Day
April 29 (details)
I am celebrating the upcoming Independent Bookstore Day by visiting at least 10 independent bookstores during the month which is part of the Book Lover Quest challenge mentioned in the details. Below are the places I visited and what I picked up. Most of the places listed are those I visit regularly for author and book events.

# 1 Books Inc.
Opera Plaza, San Francisco, CA (here)
Little White Lies: Truth & Movies, No. 68, Jan/Feb 2017
Toni Erdmann issue

#2 Diesel
Larkspur, CA (here)
Cruel Beautiful World by Caroline Leavitt

#3 Booksmith
San Francisco, CA (here)
Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

#4 Books Inc.
Laurel Village, San Francisco, CA (here)
with a Happy Birthday card

#5 Green Apple Books on the Park
San Francisco, CA (here)
with Mollie Makes
Living a Creative Life
issue number seventy seven
comes with a cute mini-loom kit

#6 Book Passage
Corte Madera, CA (here)
with News of the World by Paulette Jiles
and stocking up on more Birthday cards

#7 Alexander Book Company
San Francisco, CA (here)
with two books by Jenny Han
To All the Boys I've Loved Before
P.S. I Still Love You

#8 Books Inc.
Marina, San Francisco, CA (here)
with How To Be A Bawse by Lilly Singh

#9 Bookshop
West Portal, San Francisco, CA (here)
with The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda

#10 Book Passage
Embarcadero Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA (here)
with Note to Self by Connor Franta

#11 Green Apple Books
Clement Street, San Francisco, CA (here)
with Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

Spent Independent Bookstore Day at this fine San Francisco establishment which is currently ranked #21 on Huffington Posts's 50 Of The Best Indie Bookstores In America (here).

AND completed the Book Lover Quest challenge of visiting at least 10 independent book stores from the list. It was a fun experience to visit more than my usual three stores in a month. There are two in San Francisco that I still plan to visit for the first time.


POST Challenge visits:

Christopher's Books
Potrero Hill, San Francisco, CA (here)
with Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
and
Kokoro by Keith Yatsuhashi

Pipeliner by Shawn Hartje

Pipeliner
by Shawn Hartje

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Published: 2016
Genre: Coming of Age, YA
ebook
Rating: 3

First sentence(s):
In the Trail King parking lot, Jason Krabb saw his friend isabel Perkins's brown Dodge Aries sedan parked between giant pickups, a good sign since she'd lately been hanging with Shelly Stewart, whom Jason had been flirting with in algebra II.

Zombie sighting:
She told him to shower first and then go to bed, couldn't stand her child looking like a zombie.
-chapter 6

For seventeen-year-old Jason Krabb, high school life in 1990s Idaho is a world of cargo shorts, cassette tapes, and junk food. Plagued equally by algebra and puberty, Jason sets out to find a girlfriend and become a rock guitarist. His quest is irreversibly jolted when he attends a bonfire and meets an alluring girl from the other side of town and a rag tag crew who are bringing gas lines through the desert in order to keep the lights on in Portland and Seattle, places where Jason hopes to find his nirvana as a guitarist.

Meanwhile, things deteriorate at home. Jason's pediatrician mom, Leah, sadly faces the twilight of her parenting years while his father, Curtis, contends with the enormity of running a big ticket research laboratory and coming to terms with his son's wayward path.

Pipeliner is at once a coming of age love story and a comical timestamp of early 90s family life. Set in the fictional Idaho town of Helen Springs, pop. 58,000, its characters are as vibrant as the lofty peaks and purple sunsets of the high desert. Here we find rich farmers, poor ranchers, dutiful Mormons, government honchos, disgruntled vets, drug-dealing bruisers, irksome teachers, and spirited students, all doing their best to keep the lights on.

My two-bits:

I found this to be a mellow easy going story of life in Idaho and what it has to offer.

Idaho living and its setting of pipeline country provide a backdrop for Jason's coming-of-age story that touches upon the young adult scene, classism, religion, ethnic diversity, first love and intimate encounters.

Jason's desire to move on to bigger and better things by way of music brings in elements of the music scene which he is mostly exposed to via cassette tapes.

Although this story's primary focus is on Jason, there are also parts told in the voice of his mother. The parenting experience of teens with its ups, downs, dramas and uncertainties shows another side of Jason.


~*~
* review copy courtesy of author

Excerpt: Love Letters to the World by Meia Geddes

Love Letters to the World
by Meia Geddes
-Poetry
Amazon | Goodreads
Love Letters to the World addresses the world as body, concept, stranger.
It is a quiet celebration and exploration of life, love, language, and one's place in the world.

Excerpt:

My dear world,

I wonder if you would agree with me that slip is a very good word. Slip is currently my favorite word, though I have never had a favorite word before. Maybe slip is my new favorite word because all the lovely intangibles can slip into your life without your noticing until the slip of your being realizes it is so. Maybe it is because I have a need to slip my life into you in ways unknown, maybe because you, world, are a slip of a word. Maybe because it relates to the way one wants to live, leaving an imprint but no more, maybe because I like the way bodies can slip into one another, maybe because a slip as a garment is ever contradictory, a container yet not. A slippage, what has not come to pass or what has passed, a bit of nothingness or a bit of everything if one considers all a slip of paper might hold. The word slip contains and offers itself. Maybe one should aspire to be a slip, to slip.

With love,
M

~*~
* excerpt courtesy of author