Musing Mondays - Nov 7

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme now hosted at Jenn's blog Books And A Beat that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

• I’m currently reading…
• Up next I think I’ll read…
• I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
• I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I can’t wait to get a copy of…
• I wish I could read ___, but…
• I blogged about ____ this past week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: Do you prefer fast-paced novels, or slow, descriptive novels?

It's the day before the election. Are you as glad as I am that the campaigning is almost over? The kids are grateful that voting day means they get two days off of school this week. Our high school is a polling place. For security reasons our schools are closed Tuesday, in addition to being closed Friday for Veteran's Day.

My immediate family includes veterans. Dad was a Marine during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. My brother served during the Iraq War and my father-in-law in Korea. We are grateful for their service and the service of others who protect freedom across the globe. As a real estate agent, I specialize in helping active and retired military find new homes using their VA benefits. It's important to me to give back to those who have given us so much.

On to book news...

I'm currently reading The Ghostwriters by Micky J. Corrigan.

She's ghostwriting a book for a famous author--a recently deceased one. A struggling writer living in Manhattan, Jacy McMasters is the first to admit she's a terrific liar and a screw-up. Then the ghost of the famous novelist JD Balinger asks her to "channel" a follow-up to his classic coming of age book, The Watcher in the Sky. Along with her new boyfriend, a bear of a man who has no patience for mind games, the ghost in Jacy's head forces her to confront a lifetime of secrets—dark secrets. Secrets she's been keeping from herself.

I'm listening to Marmee & Louisa in my truck thanks to the audio book I borrowed from the library.

Since its release nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women has been a mainstay in American literature, while passionate Jo March and her calm, beloved "Marmee" have shaped generations of young women. Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence.

But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those myths, drawing on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa's "Marmee," Abigail May Alcott, was in fact the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter's world. It was Abigail who urged Louisa to write, who inspired many of her stories, and who gave her the support and courage she needed to pursue her unconventional path. Abigail, long dismissed as a quiet, self-effacing companion to her famous husband and daughter, is revealed here as a politically active feminist firebrand, a fascinating thinker in her own right. Examining family papers, archival documents, and diaries thought to have been destroyed, LaPlante paints an exquisitely moving and utterly convincing portrait of a woman decades ahead of her time—and the fiercely independent daughter who was both inspired and restricted by her mother's dreams of freedom.

A story guaranteed to turn all previous scholarship on its head, Marmee and Louisa is a gorgeously written and deeply felt biography of two extraordinary women as well as a key to our understanding of Louisa May Alcott's life and work.

I'm super excited to tell you that my next book, Macaroni and Cheese for Thanksgiving, is going off to the printer soon and I've contracted Pump Up Your Book to help promote it. Check out the cover spread.

As for this week's question, when I was younger slow, descriptive novels like Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery captured my attention. While I still enjoy them, I tend to read more fast-paced novels these days. I also love when a book immediately drops me into the action.

How about you? What do you prefer?

Hope you have a great Monday.