Two Years, No Rain - Shawn Klomparens

Two Years by Shawn Klomparens isn't a new book, but it is a book that is getting a lot press lately thanks to author Catherine McKenzie. Catherine started a campaign on Facebook called 'I Bet We Can Make These Books Bestsellers.' And the first targeted author? Shawn Klomparens. I had read and reviewed Catherine's debut novel Spin earlier this year and really enjoyed it. So I kind of figured if she liked Shawn's writing, I just might too. And I really did!

I was hooked after the first few pages of Two Years, No Rain. Andy Dunne is a nice guy, too nice really. He never gets upset and lately just takes what life is dishing out to him. His wife has just left him. But she thoughtfully marked the few things he could keep with sticky notes. Notably the condiments in the fridge. His job as a radio weatherman is on shaky ground. And he harbours a not so secret attraction for Hillary, a married woman - who is happily flirting back.

When the bottom does fall out of his job, an unexpected interview leads Andy to his his next career - as a host for a children's television program. The clouds just might be parting.

The more I read, the more addicted I became - what was going to happen next? Andy's journey as he rediscovers himself and faces the heartache from the past is compelling. He's the kind of character you're just rooting for. The supporting characters are just as engaging. I quite enjoyed his niece Hannah. The relationship with her uncle is refreshing. I wasn't as sold on Hillary though. Although she is portrayed as somewhat enigmatic at first, I was somewhat dismayed with how she uses Andy to fill a gap in her own life. Their relationship is a main focus of the book. But I enjoyed Andy's journey to mend his life the most. As Andy the tv host says every show "The answer was always inside me, the whole time." Klomparens uses weather analogies with great effect. The drought and hope/need for rain mirrors much of Andy's life.

I found it refreshing to read a male perspective by a male author. Kind of male oriented chick lit. Fans of Nick Hornby would enjoy Two Years, No Rain.

And if you do decide to purchase of copy of Two Years, No Rain or Jessica Z., you can be entered into a draw for a Kindle. Details here.

 Read an excerpt of Two Years, No Rain.    Readers guide available.

Over the Counter #17

Perfect Porches by Paula S. Wallace was the latest book to catch my eye as it passed over my library counter and under my scanner this week.

There's no better place to watch the world go by than on a porch. I have fond memories of my grandmother's stone porch in her small town. It was always so cool. The hosue was set close to the sidewalk and after dinner we'd sit out and say hello to everyone out for their evening walk.

.... and DH if you're reading this - I'd really love it if you could finish ours.....        

What's your favourite porch story?

From the publisher Clarkson Potter:

"A well-designed porch is like a welcoming committee that invites friends and family to share stories, catch up on neighborhood news, or quietly enjoy the breezes of a sultry summer evening. Porches bridge our public and private worlds, and convey the essence of one’s home.

In more than 250 stunning photographs of forty homes, Perfect Porches illustrates how varied these iconic American spaces can be. A wealth of structural appointments are presented, such as the extended eaves of a rain porch along the Gulf Coast, the shimmering copper flooring of a converted Amish cattle barn in Bluegrass country, and Outback-inspired painted thresholds in California’s wine region. Unexpected ornaments, including Moroccan pendant lamps, a vintage watering can collection, or a majolica menagerie can transform even the most modest porch into an oasis. This book also reveals a host of practical ways to bring privacy to urban porches, chic accents to old-fashioned verandas, and coziness to modern environments. Home owners share colorful stories about using their porches as communal stages for magical and sometimes mythological events, telling of ghosts encountered, arias sung, and families reunited.

Whether you seek to reawaken a cherished memory of a childhood porch, create an adorned haven of your own, or take an enlightening journey across the nation, this volume is certain to become a treasured companion as well as a source of fresh inspiration."

(Over the Counter is a regular feature at A Bookworm's World. I've sadly come the realization that I cannot physically read every book that catches my interest as it crosses over my counter at the library. But... I can mention them and maybe one of them will catch your eye as well. See if your local library has them on their shelves!)

The Madonnas of Echo Park - Brando Skyhorse

The Madonnas of Echo Park is Brando Skyhorse's debut novel. It wasn't a book I'd heard of so I started read without any preconceived notions. I was so glad I read the author's notes in the beginning - it absolutely captured me. Brando grew up in Echo Park, a ethnically diverse neigbourhood in Los Angeles. The novel sprang from an interaction he had at a 6th grade class dance party. Aurora Esperanza asks Brando to dance to the first song - Madonna's Borderline. He declines, but with the phrase "I can't dance with you - you're a Mexican." When he returns to school the next week, he is ready to apologize, but Aurora is gone. When he asks his teacher " How am I going to apologize to her?", she replies "You'll have to find another way to do it." Twenty five years later - here is the apology - the fictional book, The Madonnas of Echo Park. Now ironically - Brando's mother brought him up to believe his biological father was native, not Mexican. He was unaware of this until later in life.

The novel is a series of short stories, with each linked to the next. It begins with Aurora's estranged father waiting for day labour. We see the neighbourhood of Echo Park through his eyes. The story then segues through seemingly unrelated stories - a bus ride gone very wrong, a woman who believes she has seen the Virgin Mary, a young girl shot down as she dances to Madonna music on a street corner, and more until we 'meet' Aurora in the last chapter. The links are sometimes very surprising, jumping out and heading in a direction you least expect. (Madonna did film the video for Borderline in Echo Park)

Brando brings this neighbourhood to life and the characters, locale and dialogue have the ring of authenticity. The stories are powerful and some are unsettling. The fourth story, Rules of the Road, is about Efren, a Mexican born naturalized American who starts a race war after inadvertently killing a black man. His mind set and determination to follow the rules was unsettling.

Skyhorse presents many different voices and outlooks, male and female, all with equal talent. This was a completely different read for me, but I really enjoyed it. A really strong debut novel. The follow up -
Things My Fathers Taught Me - about life with 5 stepfathers - should be an interesting read as well.

And did the 'real' Aurora ever read the book? Brando did meet and talk to her, but wasn't sure if she would read the book.

Read an excerpt of The Madonnas of Echo Park. There is a reading club guide prepared as well.

Guest Post & Giveaway - Doug Magee - Never Wave Goodbye

I reviewed Doug Magee's debut thriller Never Wave Goodbye yesterday. Doug has a rich and varied background and I wondered how much of that was used in the writing of his novel. Doug responds....

"First Get The Facts

I’ve always enjoyed the quote attributed to Ben Franklin, “First get the facts, then distort them at your leisure.” I think it quite apt for most politicians, especially during campaigns, but recently I’ve been realizing it applies to writers of fiction as well. We who supposedly make up stories are often taking our own snapshots of the real world and, well, distorting them at our leisure.

In my own case I know how specifically this worked in my novel Never Wave Goodbye. The story is about a woman whose daughter and three other children have been kidnapped by a man pretending to be from the camp they were to attend. This idea, this hook, came to me a few years ago and then, when I sat down to write the novel, the question arose as to how to develop it, what to look at, whose part of the story to tell.

I made the decision to spend large parts of the book with the families of the kidnapped as they lived through the horror of not knowing what had happened to their children. I wanted to see that part of their experience that the media wouldn’t see, that perhaps their friends and neighbors wouldn’t see.

But I didn’t come to this decision arbitrarily. In 1980 I published a book of profiles of the families of murder victims (What Murder Leaves Behind) which was a look at the experiences of these survivors in the aftermath of the nightmare that had happened to them. In going around the country talking to families I found that many of our assumptions about their experience comes from inaccurate media portrayals, mainly news sources in which the survivors face a camera and say pretty much what the reporter wants them to say about their grief and anger. But back in their houses their experiences were quite different.

So when I wrote Never Wave Goodbye, I drew heavily on the interviews that I had gathered for the earlier book, trying to make the characters as real as possible, their responses to their tragedy as varied as I know they are in real life. But I also was aware that I was writing fiction and that characters in fiction need to be exaggerated in many cases in order to fix themselves in the reader’s mind. And so I followed Ben Franklin’s dictum and distorted at my leisure.

From reader’s responses I’ve had so far I think the strategy may have paid off in one regard. I’ve found a lot of people saying the novel makes them ask the question, What would I do if this happened to me? That makes me feel two things. First that I haven’t strayed too far from the “facts” to distance the reader from reality and secondly that I’ve distorted those facts in a way that allows the reader to keep involved in the story.

I didn’t do so but I probably should have added this line to the book’s acknowledgments. “Many thanks, Ben.”

Thanks so much Doug! Here's your chance to win a copy of Never Wave Goodbye for your summertime reading list. Simply comment to be entered - open to both Canada and the US, ends Sat. Aug 21 at 6 pm EST.

Never Wave Goodbye - Doug Magee

As a parent, it was always hard when I let my children 'go away' to overnight sleepovers the first few times, let alone weekend tournaments and across the country meets. Doug Magee has come up with a chilling premise for his first novel Never Wave Goodbye.

What if you put your child on the van for camp, waved goodbye....and then the real van came.........

Four families put their nine and ten year olds on the van for a two week stay at Camp Arno. JD, the personable driver, seems great with the kids. No bells go off with any of the parents. JD delivers the kids not to camp but to his partner Mr. Everett and from there -  they disappear - JD is not even privy to where they're headed.

 A ransom email for one million dollars is delivered to all four sets of parents. Magee teases us, slowly revealing each parent's secrets, flaws and shortcomings through small hints and foreshadowing. Surely none of them could have anything to do with the crime - not their own child? Lena Trainor provides the most frequent point of view for the parents. Out of all the parents, we come to know and empathize with her the most. Her daughter Sarah becomes the 'leader' of the kidnapped children. I was intrigued by these chapters and would have almost liked to see a bit more focus on them. The kidnappers and their point of view was chilling.

Much of the focal point is on the interaction between the parents of each child and each other. Magee has captured and portrayed the pain, anguish and feelings of  parents put in a situation that seems inconceivable.

There were a few inconsistencies that I found a bit jarring. I liked Lena up until page 129 when she argues about one family offering to part of another family's part of the ransom. It seemed out of character with her earlier actions and feelings about getting the children back at any cost. And this one is just a little complaint - I doubt there are many 10 year olds who know how to use Facebook but not how to email.

Never Wave Goodbye is full of twists and turns that build tension and  will have you suspecting almost everyone, including one of the police, until the end.  A strong debut novel and a great page turning read -  I look forward to Magees's next novel.

Read an excerpt of Never Say Goodbye.

Make sure you stop by tomorrow for a guest post and giveaway with Doug!!

Giveaway - Red Hook Road - Ayelet Waldman

Thanks to the generous folks at Doubleday Publishing, I have two copies of Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman to giveaway.

From the publisher:

"Set on the coast of Maine over the course of four summers, Red Hook Road tells the story of two families, the Tetherlys and the Copakens, and of the ways in which their lives are unraveled and stitched together by misfortune, by good intentions and failure, and by love and calamity.

A marriage collapses under the strain of a daughter’s death; two bereaved siblings find comfort in one another; and an adopted young girl breathes new life into her family with her prodigious talent for the violin. As she writes with obvious affection for these unforgettable characters, Ayelet Waldman skillfully interweaves life’s finer pleasures—music and literature—with the more mundane joys of living. Within these resonant pages, a vase filled with wildflowers or a cold beer on a hot summer day serve as constant reminders that it’s often the little things that make life so precious."

Read an excerpt of Red Hook Road. You can find Ayelet on Facebook and Twitter.

Simply comment to be entered. Open to US only, no po boxes please. Ends Sunday August 15th at 6 pm EST.

Winners - The Castaways - Elin Hilderbrand

And the three lucky winners of a copy of The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand, courtesy of The Hachette Book Group are:

1. A Real Librarian
2. dvice
3. Melissa

Congratulations! I've contacted you by email for your mailing addresses. Please respond within 72 hours. Check the sidebar for ongoing giveaways.

Winners - The Nobodies Album - Carolyn Parkhurst

And the two lucky winners of a copy of The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst, courtesy of Doubleday Publishing are:


1. Nan


2. Dawn M


Congratulations! I've contacted you by email for your mailing addresses. Thanks to all who entered and check the sidebar for ongoing giveaways.

Winners - April & Oliver - Tess Callahan

And the three lucky winners of a copy of April & Oliver by Tess Callahan., courtesy of The Hachette Book Group, are:


1. J T Oldfield
2. Andie
3. Colleen Turner

Congratulations! I've contacted by email for your mailing addresses. Please respond within 72 hours. Check the sidebar for ongoing giveaways.

Giveaway - The Disappearing Spoon - Sam Kean

Thanks to the generous folks at The Hachette Book Group, I have two copies of The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean to giveaway.

From the publisher:

"The Periodic Table is one of man's crowning scientific achievements. But it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.

We learn that Marie Curie used to provoke jealousy in colleagues' wives when she'd invite them into closets to see her glow-in-the-dark experiments. And that Lewis and Clark swallowed mercury capsules across the country and their campsites are still detectable by the poison in the ground. Why did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? And why did tellurium lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?

From the Big Bang to the end of time, it's all in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON."

Read an excerpt of The Disappearing Spoon.

Open to US and Canada, no po boxes please. Simply comment to be entered. Please make sure you either leave an email or have it in your profile. Ends Saturday Aug 14 at 6 pm EST. Good luck and check the sidebar for ongoing giveaways!