Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Two Recommended Reads

Update on my Spring Reading Thing progress: I finished Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield.

It's a really well-written, poignant memoir about a guy who falls in love, gets married at 25, and loses his wife at 31. (This isn't a surprise, if you're planning on reading the book; her death is mentioned from the start). You don't see a lot of books written from the young widower POV, and since he's also a writer for Rolling Stone, he has a great way with words. Here are 2 of my favorite quotes from the book:

When I started feeling morbid and empty, I felt like I was turning into a different person from the guy she fell in love with. I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language. Without her to talk to, there was nothing to say.

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I hated living in a man's house, with a man's refrigerator and a man's bathroom. A man-woman bathroom only takes a couple of weeks to become a man's bathroom when the woman is no longer there...I missed the feminine touch, not just hers, but mine. I missed being half-girl, half-boy, part of a whole. Now that I was male in a male environment, it was harder to manifest her physical chick presence, no matter how many of her MAC lipsticks I set out on the coffee table in a basket like so many M&Ms.

In between the sadness, though, there are lots of stories of how they met, how they fell in love, how music brought them together, how he survived it all. And one cool element is that every chapter is headed by a picture of a mix tape he actually made in such-and-such a year.

Let me tell you, it made me appreciate my hubby and my marriage that much more!! Definitely a recommended read.

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And second, I'm thrilled to announce the release of The Write Ingredients by Lori Foster. It's a cookbook compiled of yummy recipes from a variety of authors, and the proceeds will go to supporting our US troops. Even better, I'm one of the authors! Now, I won't tell you which recipe is mine, so you'll have to buy the book and see. But I will say that it's a completely foolproof, easy appetizer/light lunch treat that gets rave reveiws every time I make it.


So support your favorite budding Samhain author (um...that would be me...) as well as the troops (who really shouldn't be there any longer ~ can we bring them home already??) and purchase Lori's book!

For more information, visit Lori Foster’s website! http://www.lorifoster.com/and lorifoster.com/community/readergettogthr.htm

2 comments:

Rebecca said...

I think you've sold me on both the memoir and the cookbook, Allie - seriously they both sound great.

Anonymous said...

Really, the memoir sounds like a wonderful read. And I didn't get a recipe in the cookbook. When I went to submit one several weeks before the deadline, Crissy already had enough. It sold really well at Lori Foster's event last weekend. Readers were going to authors to sign by their recipes. I didn't get one yet, but looking forward to your recipe, Allie. The line was too long while we had the book signing.