Library Book Hold: Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister

 

The Prairie Pages Book Club over at Modern Prairie is reading Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister this month. I haven't been reading with them lately because my schedule conflicts with our monthly Zoom meeting, but I requested a hold on this book from my local library. 

At an intimate, festive dinner party in Seattle, six women gather to celebrate their friend Kate's recovery from cancer. Wineglass in hand, Kate strikes a bargain with them. To celebrate her new lease on life, she'll do the one thing that's always terrified her: white-water rafting down the Grand Canyon. But if she goes, each of them must promise to do one thing in the next year that is new, or difficult, or scary—and Kate gets to choose their challenges.

Shimmering with warmth, wit, and insight, Joy for Beginners is a celebration of life: unexpected, lyrical, and deeply satisfying.

Doesn't this sound wonderful? It's currently available in hardcover, paperback, audiobook, and on Kindle. 

New Release: The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer

In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny...and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.

Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.

Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative that weaves together two women’s stories into a tapestry of perseverance, loyalty, love and honor. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced ... and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.

Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Graydon House; Original edition (March 19, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1525823566
ISBN-13: 978-1525823565


Purchase here!

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books About Friendship

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week they will post a new Top Ten list that one of the bloggers at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All they ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Ten Books About Friendship

1

Kindred spirits - Anne Shirley and Diana Barry. Need I say more?

2

Jack Baker and Early Auden had an odd and sometimes tense friendship, but Jack truly learned to appreciate Early by the end of the book.

3

By being forced to trust her friends, M.T. learned a great deal about herself and others.

4 

Greg Heffley and Rowley Jefferson prove that sometimes you need a goofy friend around to make you feel better about your own plight?

5

 Nikki Maxwell couldn't make it through her days at the snobby private middle school she attends without her BFFs Chloe and Zoey. They help her keep a sane head around Mackenzie Hollister and the rest of the CCP (Cool, Cute & Popular) kids.

6

If  Katniss has to hunt to feed her family, at least she gets to do it with her swoon worthy best friend, Gale. And though she isn't one for getting close to people, her friendship with Rue is one of the most touching parts of this series.

7

Friendship Bread proves that friends are just about the best thing in the world.

8

Friends that knit together, strike together. This book proves friendship and a good laugh go hand in hand.

9

Olivia Lockhart and Grace Sherman have a solid friendship that has faced a lot of challenges over the years.

10

Though IT is a horror story about a clown who preys on young children, at its heart, this book is about a group of friends who return to their hometown to stop a frightening beast. They beat it once as children and they are determined to come back and finish what they started now that they are adults and living very different lives.