Book giveaway: 'Eat, Drink, and Be Married' by Rebecca Bloom

If you're a fan of chick lit, have ever been in a wedding party or attended a destination wedding, you'll likely get a kick out of "Eat, Drink, and Be Married" by Rebecca Bloom (Self/iuniverse, 2009, 197 pp., $14.95, available on Amazon.com). 

It's about four college friends who gather for a wedding in Lake Tahoe, Calif., and the hilarity and drama that ensues.

In a November 8, 2011, interview with LA Confidental Magazine (where Bloom was once executive editor and editor at large) she said she was inspired to write this novel because:

"I’ve been to so many weddings and realized much of the drama takes place among the guests. The people getting married often have a different experience entirely of their wedding then their friends. I liked that dichotomy and used it as the inspiration. Each of these women is going through different life changes and emotional journeys and it all comes together at this wedding."

Win it:

I'm giving away the review copy provided by the author to one lucky reader of this blog. If you'd like that to be YOU, please comment below with some way to get in touch with you or email your mailing address to me at mkaras@pottsmerc.com. One person will be chosen at random to win the book.

Book summary:

When college girlfriends Kate, Nina and Zoë take a break from their busy schedules on opposite coasts to join their former roommate Hannah for her wedding in Lake Tahoe, they not only bring suitcases packed with ‘what-not-to-wear’ bridesmaid dresses, but baggage of a more emotional kind. Supported by a variety of eclectic characters determined to wreak havoc on their carefully organized lives, each woman is forced to come to terms with her past before she walks down the aisle.

Zoë must learn how to reveal a vulnerability that lies beneath her bravado before she can finally open her heart; Kate needs to reclaim her identity before she can regain her strut, and Nina must heal her own inner child so she can provide for another. And we can’t forget Hannah, the bride, who needs to release a ghost in order to recover her spirit.

It takes a bottle of booze, a host of laughs, a hankie or two worth of tears, and 72 hours in the presence of those who know and love them the most to make the perfect recipe for four women to "Eat, Drink, and Be Married." 

REBECCA BLOOM

According to Bloom's publicist: For anyone who has ever met up with old friends to celebrate the destination wedding of a mutual best friend, "Eat, Drink and Be Married" by Rebecca Bloom is a must read! This embodiment of ‘chick lit’ at its absolute finest and funniest will make you both laugh and cry, reminding any woman with BFF’s of the inter-workings of their closest relationships. This is a book that should be on hand at every bridal salon in the country, becoming part of new wedding traditions and memories.

About the author:

Rebecca Bloom graduated from Brown University in 1996. From her Los Angeles home, she manages a small jewelry and clothing design business and writes full-time.  

Bloom has served as the executive editor and editor at large for Los Angeles Confidential Magazine. Her debut novel, "Girl Anatomy," was published by HarperCollins in 2002. Bloom's second novel, "Tangled Up In Daydreams," was published by HarperCollins in 2003. Bloom's writing is also included in a collection of short stories, "Have I Got A Guy for You," (April 2008, Adams Media). "Eat, Drink, and Be Married" is her third novel.

For more information, visit the author's website, www.rebeccabloom.com.

Scholarship coach, author Ben Kaplan to speak in Phoenixville Sept. 27

Below is a press release I received from publisher HarperCollins about an upcoming author event in Phoenixville:

Scholarship coach Ben Kaplan to speak at Philly-area school to help students afford their college dreams

Ben Kaplan has an unprecedented mission: To show students and parents how to win college scholarships and make their educational dreams come true. It’s a cause close to his heart: While a high school student, Kaplan won more than two dozen scholarship awards and accumulated nearly $90,000 in scholarship funds — enabling him to attend his dream school, Harvard University, virtually for free.

Now an acclaimed speaker, media personality, and 34-year-old bestselling author of "How to Go to College Almost for Free" (HarperCollins Publishers), Kaplan will be delivering a special scholarship presentation sponsored and hosted by College Planning Center. This event is open to the general public and is suitable for high school, college, and graduate school students, adults changing careers, as well as parents of young and older children. The event will be held as follows: 

• Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012
• Time: 7 - 8:30 p.m.
• Location: Phoenixville Area Middle School
• Address: 1330 Main St., Phoenixville, PA 19460
• Cost: FREE to the general public

Register at: events.benkaplan.com/pa

In the presentation, Kaplan will share his expertise on the “nuts and bolts” of scholarships--how they work, how to find them, and how to win them - as well as his insights into college savings and financial aid. His presentation will draw upon his multimedia course, 'How to Go to College Almost for Free: 10 Days to Scholarship Success' and additional material from his www.CityofCollegeDreams.org website. Because space is limited, advance registration at events.benkaplan.com/pa is required.

College Planning Center helps families pay for college and navigate the financial aid process.

Kaplan has appeared on 2,000 TV and radio shows, including interviews with Oprah, Good Morning America, Nightline, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox News, NPR, and the BBC.

Among other awards, Kaplan was selected the "Top Student Leader in America" by the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Known for his fun, high-energy speaking style, Kaplan has saved tens of thousands of families more than half a billion dollars in college costs over the past 10 years.   

To learn more about Ben and his work, visit: www.cityofcollegedreams.org/benkaplan

Read this before bed and you'll likely lose sleep

I've read a lot of really amazing debut novels this year. Amor Towles' "Rules of Civility," Roberta Rich's "Midwife of Venice," Paul Elwork's "The Girl Who Would Speak For the Dead," and "The Language of Flowers" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh all come to mind. 

"Before I Go To Sleep," by S.J. Watson (June 2011, HarperCollins, $14.99 paperback, 368 pp.) also falls in that category. The suspense/thriller of a different sort was given to me by my sister, who predicted I would tear through it. I finally picked it up last week and just like Jennifer said (she's always right!), this is a book I didn't want to put down.

The book is told from the viewpoint of Christine Lucas, a 47-year-old British woman who wakes up every day with no memory. She wakes up feeling like she's 20, and then looks at her self in the mirror and sees her body aged beyond the age she thinks she is and has trouble putting it all together (we all do that ... right?)

Christine wakes up every day in bed with a stranger - one we learn is her husband Ben. Ben does his best to fill Christine in on the pertinent details of her life before heading out the door to work each day, leaving her with a list of things she might do (laundry, walk, etc.). Christine spends the rest of the day trying to figure out who she is and how she's become this way.

Ben tells Christine she was hit by a car years ago and the resulting head trauma has permanently - and likely irrevocably - damaged her memory. Christine can conjure no memory of the incident, and, as with all the other facts about herself, she has to take Ben's word for what happened.

Unbeknownst to Ben, Christine is sought out by a physician who claims he's making advances in the realm of memory loss. Dr. Nash advises Christine to start keeping a journal, and to put it in a place where every day she can read it and re-learn the memories of the day before - and possibly discover new memories along the way. 

Christine does start to keep a journal and it DOES help her make strides with her memory. However, those memories don't always come without a price. She remembers giving birth to a son, Adam, only to learn from Ben that Adam has died. She remembers she was a writer, and discovers she published a novel and was working on a second when she had her accident. Christine remembers her best friend from college, Claire, only to learn from Ben that she and Claire had a falling out and that Claire since has left the country, possibly to New Zealand. And, most intriguingly, she starts to remember the details of a brutal attack by a lover - a strangulation and near-drowning. Ben tells her he knows about the lover and has forgiven her. But Christine still has questions.

So, the reader follows Christine through her days, waking up next to Ben. Sometimes she's naked and so is he. Often he tries to make love to her, although she feels she doesn't even know him. The creep factor just keeps rising.

With the help of her journal, Christine learns quite a bit about her past, and can literally see the lies that it seems Ben tells her each day. He will omit the fact that she has a son from the daily update, for instance.

It seems that Ben is the only person Christine can trust, other than her doctor. But then Christine finds Claire and rekindles their friendship. Claire helps Christine to remember many of the details of her life that she's forgotten since her accident. And the creepy feeling the reader has an inkling of starts to get stronger and stronger.

This novel will keep you turning pages into the wee hours of the morning to try to figure out just what's going on in Christine's life. Something doesn't add up. Well, a LOT of things don't add up.

"Before I Go to Sleep" is not what I'd call great literature, but it is a good read.

I'm not going to spoil the thrilling climax of the story, but I will say it answered some questions but left me with a few more.

Once you've read the book and want to compare questions the book left you with, let me know!

Book summary (from the author's website):

Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man. She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle-aged face. And every morning, the man she has woken up with must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband, she is 47 years old, and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories.

But it’s the phone call from a Dr. Nash, a neurologist who claims to be working with Christine without her husband’s knowledge, that directs her to her journal, hidden in the back of her closet. For the past few weeks, Christine has been recording her daily activities—tearful mornings with Ben, sessions with Dr. Nash, flashes of scenes from her former life—and rereading past entries, relearning the facts of her life as retold by the husband she is completely dependent upon. As the entries build up, Christine asks many questions. What was life like before the accident? Why did she and Ben never have a child? What has happened to Christine’s best friend? And what exactly was the horrific accident that caused such a profound loss of memory?

Every day, Christine must begin again the reconstruction of her past. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more un-believable it seems.

Click here for a link to download a PDF of the first chapter.

Click here to view the book trailer. Apparently this is the trailer from the Australian version of the book. It's kind of dark.

About the author:

S.J. WATSON

Steve 'S J' Watson was born in the Midlands, lives in London and worked in the National Health Service for a number of years.

In 2009, Watson was accepted into the first Faber Academy Writing a Novel Course: "Before I Go to Sleep" was the result, a novel that attracted attention from many of the UK's major publishers. Rights have already been sold in 30 languages and a film version is due to beginning shooting later this year.

Read a Q&A with Watson about "Before I Go To Sleep" here.

Visit the author's website here.

What's a Pulitzer-winning novel worth to you?

"The Yiddish Policemen's Union," by Michael Chabon, (HarperCollins, 414 pp., 2007) 

Long a fan of author Michael Chabon ("Wonder Boys," "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh"), I decided to rent, for $1 from the local library, the audiobook version of his 2007 novel "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" for a long car trip. Little did I know those seventeen audio CDs would take much longer than an 8-hour jaunt to get through.

Earlier this week I forked over $10 in fines to the Pottstown Regional Public Library - a dollar for each day I was late returning the audiobook (The library recently changed its policy, unbeknownst to me and possibly during the two legal weeks I had this audio book out, to charge a dollar a day late fees instead of the previous $1/two weeks ... big difference! But, as the kindly librarian told me as she smiled wryly and placed my $10 bill in the cash register: "Think of it as a donation to your library.")

I'm still trying to get over parting with that $10, obviously, but back to the novel. Had I not enjoyed it and Chabon's sheer genius with words, I might be ... more bitter.

In "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," Chabon created an alternate history on the fictional island city of Sitka, Alaska, a Jewish settlement created during World War II. A similar settlement was actually proposed in a real document, the Slattery Report, back then, but was never acted on.

Per Wikipedia, "The report, which dealt with Alaskan development through immigration, included a proposal to move European refugees, especially Jews from Nazi German and Austria, to four locations in Alaska."

In the book, the fictional yet very realistically described Sitka is a temporary home given by the American government to Jewish refugees who were being persecuted by Nazis. Its existence preserves the lives of millions, as instead of 6 million being killed in the Holocaust, 2 million were in this novel. Yiddish is the language of Sitka, which is set to revert to American rule after 60 years.

Chabon said that the idea for the novel came when he found a English-to-Yiddish dictionary at an old book shop. He began to wonder what situation might require the book, as Yiddish is not spoken much anymore. Chabon wrote an essay on the topic, "Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts," published in Harper's in October 1997. After that, he got some backlash from pro-Yiddish speakers of the world. Chabon said he was inspired to further develop the settlement idea to egg them on.

But this novel is also a straightforward - and intriguing - detective story. A man is shot execution-style in the apartment building Meyer Landsman, a run-down, recently divorced homicide detective with the Sitka police.

The man was someone who hustled chess for money to buy heroin. But the brutality of the murder is shocking. And it's soon discovered that the man was a holy man - maybe the holiest of all men in Sitka. Meyer and his half-Indian/half-Jew partner Berko Shemets launch and investigation, despite pressure NOT to do so from everyone they come across.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the reversion of Sitka to American rule. Meyer's running out of time to find the murderer while all of Sitka is preparing for an exodus.

Unlike most straight detective stories, however, this one has its own Yiddish flavor imported through the biting, sarcastic and often hilarious prose of Chabon.

Here's an example:

“It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts.”

I'm not saying the library fine was worth it, but this was a great "read" (listen?). The prose is so intelligent and the story so intricate and imaginative - It's a pretty amazing tale. My only problem with consuming this in audio form (other than the obvious $10 loss) is that I didn't get to see the spellings of all the Jewish and Indian places. I'm a freak for that sort of detail - I want to know what the word looks like, how it's spelled.

Here's an April 2007 excerpt published in USA Today of Chapter One of the novel.

Here's a later excerpt, originally published in Details magazine.

MICHAEL CHABON

About the author (borrowed heavily from Wikipedia):

Michael Chabon, 49, is "one of the most celebrated writers of his generation," according to The Virginia Quarterly Review. His first novel, "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" (1988), was published when he was 25; His second novel, "Wonder Boys" (1995), and two short-story collections followed. In 2000, Chabon published "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," a critically acclaimed novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001.

His novel "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," published in 2007, won the Hugo, Sidewise, Nebula and Ignotus awards.

 

Chabon, whose name now that I listened to the audio book I know is pronounced "Shea" like the stadium and "Bon" like Bon Jovi, is notably one of the writers of the new movie "John Carter" (2012) and also wrote "Spider-Man 2" (2004) in addition to the screenplays for his own novels "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" (2008) and "Wonder Boys" (2000).