Jeffrey Stepakoff’s Fireworks over Toccoa has all the passion of The Bridges of Madison County with the nostalgic longing of Titanic. And, I believe the story in Fireworks is compelling enough that if it is adapted and cast well, it could have similar success.
While Fireworks is his first novel, Stepakoff is very familiar with writing for drama. With a writing resume with the likes of Wonder Years, Dawson’s Creek and Sisters (a personal favorite), it is hard to read this love story without imagining it on a screen.
Fireworks over Toccoa …

For the second time this month, I’ve read a novel that actually reads more like a collection of short stories. But unlike my previous experience, I really enjoyed Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for literature, Olive Kitteridge is a collection of stories set in a small town in Maine. The common thread that ties them all together is a local school teacher and namesake of the collection.

Olive is strong-willed, brash, opinionated and sometimes even cold. However, she loves fiercely and deeply and through the eyes of her …

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. I had no idea until I read it on Nymeth’s blog, but since she’s the daughter of Byron – one of my favorites of the British romantic poets – it’s as good a connection as any to what this post is about. Today is to celebrate women in science. To learn why that is, you’ll need to go over to Things Mean A Lot to find out.
I’m going to celebrate women in science by focusing on technology and inviting you all to visit BlogTalkRadio and …

Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin may just be the best book I’ve read that I didn’t like. Winner of the National Book Award for fiction last year, McCann’s novel reads more like a collection of short stories about various residents of New York City whose lives are connected by a single event in 1974 – the day a tight-rope walker decided to walk between the World Trade Center towers.
First, what I did like. McCann’s writing is beautiful – poetic at times. Two examples:
“Family is like water – it …

I have a confession to make. I tried not once, but twice, to read Atonement and just couldn’t do it. I feel like I have sinned against and let the whole society of readers down. As penance, I did not see the movie. That is my confession.
To allow Ian McEwan the opportunity to redeem himself, I picked up On Chesil Beach as an audio book (read by McEwan – which is something else I try to stay away from) at my work library. As I was checking it out, a …

If you have the opportunity, go see this musical. Winner of eight Tony’s in 2007 including best musical, music and choreography, Spring Awakening is based on the play by Frank Wedekind written just prior to turn of the 20th century. It was banned shortly after its release, and only at the turn of the 21st century has been revitalized into a musical that mixes Germany in 1891 with modern music and hairstyles.
It is the story of teenagers on the brink of experience under the pressure of strict and repressed parents, …

I haven’t read Katie Crouch’s Girls in Trucks. It was one of those peripheral books I heard about here & there – good things at that – but just never got around to picking it up. So, when I saw her next novel, Men and Dogs, I knew I needed to read it.
In Men and Dogs, Hannah Lagare has been moving through life without really getting over her past. When she was 11, her dad disappeared. While “officially” he was reported dead, there was never concrete evidence of this, and so …

On Tuesday night, I went to a local reading / signing featuring Kathryn Stockett of The Help. It is always fun to meet the face behind the words, and I love hearing writers talk about their writing process. And, I must mentioned that she started the evening expressing her pleasure that this crowd had gathered to talk about “the written word” – my chosen theme for the year.

Stockett read not from the book proper, but from the postscript essay, “Too Little, Too Late.” A nice selection, that in her sweet …

Wally Lamb is one of the authors I put on my TBR list last year. While I purchased She’s Come Undone, when I saw The Hour I First Believed at Sauls Memorial Libary (my work library), I snatched it up – and am so glad I did.
I’ve talked a bit about the differences in experiencing a book by listening to it versus reading it, and I’m anxious to compare Lamb in these two scenarios. OK, I’m beating around the bush. I don’t know if I fell in love with Wally …

I was reading a fellow reviewers blog recently and saw that she had described a book as delicate. It occurred to me that of all the adjectives I’ve used to describe writing, delicate is not one of them. How does book, novel, story emerge as delicate? I racked my brain to come up with something from my past I would describe as such and still I came up lacking.

And before you think I’m going to use this term for Sadie Jones’ The Outcast, I am not. However, since the term …