Waiting on Wednesday: First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival

Jill at Breaking the Spine hosts Waiting on Wednesday. Stop by and check out the great books your fellow readers can’t wait to get their hands on. What book are you waiting for?

TITLE: First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival

AUTHOR: Ken Wheaton

PUB DATE: Dec 29, 2009

Product Description (amazon)

Welcome to Grand Prairie, Louisiana - land of confounding accents, hard-drinking senior citizens, and charming sinners - brought to hilarious life in a bracing, heartfelt debut novel simmering with Cajun spice...Father Steve Sibille has come home to the bayou to take charge of St. Pete's church. Among his challenges are teenybopper altar girls, insomnia-curing confessions, and alarmingly alluring congregant Vicky Carrier. Then there's Miss Rita, an irrepressible centenarian with a taste for whiskey, cracklins, and sticking her nose in other people's business. When an outsider threatens to poach Father Steve's flock, Miss Rita suggests he fight back by staging an event that will keep St. Pete's parishioners loyal forever. As The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival draws near, help comes from the strangest places. And while the road to the festival may be paved with good intentions - not to mention bake sales, an elephant, and the most bizarre cook-out ever - where it will lead is anyone's guess.

Wordless Wednesday

My 2010 Reading Challenge Picks

Once again, J.Kaye is hosting the 100+ Reading Challenge. I love this challenge as it's usually one I can successfully complete.  SIGN UP HERE .

Thanks again to J. Kaye for hosting the Support Your Local Library Challenge again in 2010. I'm only doing the Mini-Challenge (25) Library books, as my goals for 2010 is to read MORE MORE MORE off my own shelves. More info or  SIGN UP HERE.

This was a challenge I really enjoyed in 2009. For 2010 I hope to read 50 New Authors. Interested in expanding you horizons. Visit Jackie at Literary Escapism to SIGN UP HERE.

I'm getting older not younger (aren't we all)? There are many many great books I want to read and have put off for far too long. So I decided to host my 1st challenge. My goal is (25 predetermined books). Details or SIGN UP HERE.

And, my #1 priority in 2010 is "clearing off  my shelves". With 600+ unread books, this is a MUST. So I decided to take this project seriously, and am committing to (75 books) -- you can choose as few as (20). Want to do the same? For more info and sign up:  SIGN UP HERE.

I don't want to feel "challenge pressure" this year, so (5) seems doable for me. What challenges are you committing to for 2010?

Tuesday Teaser

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B from Should Be Reading.

The rules are as follows:

*Grab your current read
*Open to a random page
*Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
*Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel; Jeanette Walls

(p.19) "The way Mom saw it, women should let the menfolk do the the work because it made them feel more manly. The notion made sense only if you had a strong man willing to step up and get things done, and between Dad's gimp, Buster's elaborate excuses, and Apache's tendency to disappear, it was often up to me to keep the place from falling apart".

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is hosted on Mondays by Marcia at the Printed Page.

Just (2) for me, but they both sound great!

The Broken Teaglass; Emily Arsenault ( sent by a paperbackswap.com member)

When She Flew; Jennie Shortridge  (Penguin Group)

How about the rest of you....any good titles you'd like to share??

Thankfully Reading Weekend and Stuff

I need some time to finish up some 2009 challenges and just learned of this upcoming fun event:

Looking for an informal, no pressure opportunity to devote to books and reading?  Jenn from Jenn's Bookshelves gets full credit for coming up with the idea of Thankfully Reading Weekend. which will start on Friday, November 27 and end on Sunday, November 29.

There are no rules to the weekend and no prizes; the plan is to simply hoping to devote a good amount of time to reading, and perhaps meeting some  reading challenges and goals for 2009. We thought it'd be fun if we cheered each other on a bit. If you think you can join in, grab the button (Didn't Jenn do a great job?) and sign on to Mr. Linky. If you don't have a blog, use the comments!

If you can't join this weekend, Bethany of Dreadlock Girl is hosting a Read-a-thon on December 5 and Michelle of GalleySmith is hosting "seriespalooza," an event for catching up on your series, later in December.

International readers: Just join in, no need to be celebrating the U.S. holiday. Remember that there are no rules. You can sign up HERE.

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Other Stuff

It's been a lousy (9) days around these parts since my brother's passing. The hub hub of activity: preparations for the wake, funeral, celebration of his life, and all the cards, flowers, food. Suddenly, all the activity stops and suddenly the realization sets in. My SIL and I have started our walking routine once again. Things feel very weird to me, without my brother next door.  I have my husband, who has been my rock through lots of sleepless nights.  I can only imagine how lonely the house must be for my SIL. Life, at least for now time passes slowly around these parts for all of us. 

Thank you all for your warm, sincere expressions of sympathy; it meant so much to me. 

• READING -  I'm almost through with (2) books: Her Fearful Symmetry, Niffenegger, and Away; Amy Bloom (audio) - I am enjoying both of them, now that I am a bit less distracted. 
  
• THANKSGIVING - This did have a way of sneaking up on us. We'll be having (6) for dinner so I won't be stressing myself out too much.  (What are your plans --those of you celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday?)

End of Year Reading - I Hope

I always panic towards the end of the year. There are always so many books that I want to squeeze in, but so much else going on that there is usually not enough time to do everything. Some of these books have sat on my shelf a bit longer than others, but all were published/acquired in 2009.

Can you help me out, and let me know if there are any on my list that you absolutely loved?

• Await Your Reply; Dan Chaon
• The Lacuna; Barbara Kingsolver
• Secrets of a Christmas Box; Steven Hornby
•  Amigoland; Oscar Casares
  
• Wishin and Hopin; Wally Lamb
• The Gift; Cecelia Ahern
• Her Fearful Symmetry; Audrey Niffenegger
• Prima Donna; Megan Chance
• Saving Cicadas; Nicole Seitz
  
• Saving CeeCee Honeycutt; Beth Hoffman
• The Girl on Legare Street; Karen White
• New World Monkeys; Nancy Mauro
  
• Cowboy and Wills; Monica Holloway
  
• Alice I Have Been; Melanie Benjamin
  
• Half Broke Horses; Jeanette Walls
  

Do you have any end of  year reading goals?

Behold -- Mighty Mouse

(Sent to me by a dear friend; this made my day. Hope it puts a smile on your face as well).


BEHOLD -- MIGHTY MOUSE ! ! !
 
Seemingly unaware of the beast towering over it, the tiny rodent grabbed at  scraps of meat thrown into the African Leopard's enclosure. But instead of  pouncing on the tiny intruder, the 2-year-old leopard Sheena kept her  distance.  After a few minutes she tried to nudge the mouse away with her  nose, but the determined little guy kept chewing away until he was full.

The extraordinary scene was captured by photography student Casey Gutteridge at the Santago Rare Leopard Project in Hertfordshire, England .  The 19-year-old, photographing the leopard for a course project, was astounded by the mouse's behavior.

He said had no idea where the mouse came from.  He just appeared after the keeper had dropped in the meat for the leopard. Taking no notice of the leopard, the mouse went straight over to the meat and started eating. 

Even when the leopard bent down and sniffed him, the mouse just carried on eating like nothing had happened. Even the keeper said he'd never seen anything like it before. 

Project owner Jackie James added: “It was so funny to see - Sheena batted the mouse a couple of times to try to get it away from her food. But the determined  little thing took no notice and just carried on.”  

The mouse continued to eat the leopard's lunch and showed the leopard who was boss.  We can only assume that Casey received a grade of A on his project!  

 

Mailbox Monday on Thursday

With all that has been going on, I did not have a chance to post my books that arrived in last week's mail. Here they are:

Under the Dome; Stephen King (purchased)

9 Dragons; Michael Connelly (won)

The Island of Eternal Love; Chaviano (purchased)

Buckley's Story; King (review copy)

Loitering With Intent; Murial Spark (purchased)

We Have Always Lived in a Castle; Jackson (purchased)

The Glass Room: Mawer (purchased)

Waiting on Wednesday - Secrets of Eden; Chris Bohjalian

Waiting on Wednesday...books I can't wait to read hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.




Title: Secrets of Eden
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Pub. Date:  February 2, 2010

about the book - From author's website

Chris Bohjalian's latest novel is rich with his elegant, page-turning prose and builds to the sort of ending that left millions of readers of The Double Bind and Midwives speechless and stunned - and hungry for another of his books.

"There," says Alice Hayward to Reverend Stephen Drew, just after her baptism, and just before going home to the husband who will kill her that evening and then shoot himself. Drew, tortured by the cryptic finality of that short utterance, feels his faith in God slipping away and is saved from despair only by a meeting with Heather Laurent, the author of wildly successful, inspirational books about . . . angels.
Heather survived a childhood that culminated in her parents' murder-suicide, so she identifies deeply with Alice and George's daughter, Katie, offering herself as a mentor to the girl and a shoulder for Stephen - who flees the pulpit to be with Heather and see if there is anything to be salvaged from the spiritual wreckage around him.

But then the State's Attorney begins to suspect that Alice's husband may not have killed himself. . .and finds out that Alice had secrets only her minister knew.
 
(Chris Bohjalian is a favorite author. I've read and enjoyed all of his books).  What is your WOW pick for this week?