While vacationing in western North Carolina, I visited the The Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne Bar in Asheville. I think I’m in love. Forget the coffee & book combo. This place knows how to keep readers inside. A beautiful setting to sip bubbly from crystal glasses while browsing the shelves or sitting with a…
All posts tagged #booklist
Summer Reading
Looking for an adventurous, animal-centered story for your summer reading project? Look no further than Dave Eggers’ The Eyes & the Impossible. My library has this beautiful edition with front and back covers made of wood. The illustrations are gorgeous. This book is a pleasure to behold, and to read. Johannes, a stray dog, is…
Monthly Reads: June
Posted on Author Jill M SmithPosted in Care Givers, Monthly Reads, What I'm Reading, WritingLeave a Reply
This month I’ve read two fiction books, and one non-fiction book on the craft of writing. Anne of Green Gables is a children’s classic that I just read for the first time. It is interesting to see how the craft of writing and publishing standards have evolved over the years. Hang the Moon was about…
Sensational Sentences: The Lake House by Kate Morton
Posted on Author Jill M SmithPosted in Sensational Sentences, Teacher Resources, Teacher Tuesday, WritingLeave a Reply
If you are a reader or a writer or both, I’m sure you have come across sentences that make you pause and re-read them, not because they are confusing, but because they are so beautifully crafted you couldn’t take it all in the first time. I have a journal in which I copy sentences from…
What I’m Reading: the Beartown Trilogy by Fredrik Backman
I’ve finished reading Fredrik Backman’s trilogy, Bear Town, Us Against You, and The Winners. Backman is one of my favorite contemporary authors. Readers get to know his characters in their day to day routines: what they eat; if they walk, run, or drive; if they’re good at hockey or not. Backman breaks the rule about…
On My Bookshelf: books about mothers, motherhood, and mothering
I’ve been thinking about books that explore the relationship between mother and child. Pictured are volumes pulled at random from my own bookcase. Once I started pulling, I realized I had more than I thought – many more that are not in the picture. The mother-child relationship keeps readers engaged…do we see ourselves in the…
April Reads
Because of travel, April was not as reading-strong as I would have liked. The Wilder Boys Saving Cody by Brandon Wallace is the third in this middle-grade series which is the genre I write in, and the protagonists are two brothers, which is another similarity to my own manuscript. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote…
What I’m Reading: The Essay by Robin Yocum
Posted on Author Jill M SmithPosted in Care Givers, Teacher Inspiration, What I'm ReadingLeave a Reply
I love discovering an author whom I’ve never read – sometimes never heard of – through friends or other recommendations. When I read a book by such an author, I am apprehensive of what my reaction will be. Just because a friend or family member liked it, will I? Robin Yocum is an example of…
March Reads
The Paris Bookseller and Fried Green Tomatoes contain strong bonds between women who work together, live together, and even love together. In Remarkably Bright Creatures, the hero for me was the female protagonist, Tova, more so than the octopus, Marcellus, although I did enjoy seeing what he was up to. In her memoir, The Glass…
February Reads
I read three books – two fiction and one autobiography for February. All different from each other, but in each the mother and child relationship plays a key role. In Pachinko and Mom & Me & Mom (the autobiography of Maya Angelou) the mother-child relationship evolves over a lifetime. In Very Valentine, the grandmother-granddaughter relationship…
