New Fine Arts Center becomes the first public building constructed in a small Texas city for last thirty years. Local artists and active workers, parents and teachers, historians and collectors of national creativity participated in center building. All of them thought over what should be their place for public meetings
Hi-tech Audience
Project by Kell Muñoz Architects is almost 2000 sq.m., a hall 975 places and an audience completed with the hi-tech audio-visual equipment. The project budget has been limited enough, $5.7 million dollars. This building of time declaring a multicultural modernism, traditional for district (Rio Grande Valley), mixed with the international modernism associating with Mexico.
Art Center in Texas
To allocate a new public place, the construction facade has been raised. The front composition from the bright vertical strips organized according to a color spectrum, very brightly allocates a building in a silent and harmonious landscape.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D" has been given the official go-ahead and is ready to begin filming next month for a possible 2013 release date. Wonder why it's not next year. Seems too long. Anyway, the new film is confirmed to be a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper's 1973 original, but obviously set in the "now" time. There's no word on who will star in the film. But I'm sure casting is happening right now, if filming is to begin next month. The film will be made by Lionsgate and their partner Nu Images, with John Luessenhop, director of "Takers", directing the new film. Lionsgate have signed a "six sequel" deal with Nu Images. Everyone thought that after 2006's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning", the franchise was dead................until now. The chainsaw will be sharpened again!!!!!!
Every city throughout the United States has been impacted by the recent economic recession. The combined forces of the credit crisis and the foreclosure crisis led to plummeting home prices in every region of the country. The ripples were felt from San Francisco condos to homes for sale. However, some metropolitan areas were able to avoid the worst of the turmoil and are now emerging from the mess faster than the rest of the country.
The recovery is swiftest in those areas that didn’t have as much of a housing price run up to begin with, either because the economy in those areas has stayed healthy or the economy has been limited for decades and residents have adapted or left. The top recovering areas also had lower rates of sub-prime and negative amortization loans financed in the years leading up to and during the crash.
In December of 2009, Forbes Magazine released a list of the number of loans that were foreclosed upon in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Forbes then calculated the percentage of loans that were descending into further delinquency versus those that were improving.
For example, the number of foreclosed homes in Austin was examined to see which loans continued towards the path of complete default versus those which inched their way back towards normalcy. The lower the rate of deterioration was for a given area, the higher their corresponding ranking with regard to recovery.
Here are the cities that fared best by that measurement and are recovering the most quickly:
1. Harrisburg-Carlisle, Pa. 2. Austin-Round Rock, Texas 3. Ogden-Clearfield, Utah 4. Buffalo, NY 5. Knoxville, Tennessee
Source: Forbes, Francesca Levy (12/09/2009)
The Pennsylvania region of Harrisburg, and the Austin area of Texas were rated the best, followed by Ogden, Utah and Buffalo, NY. The homes seem to be recovering quite well as that region came in fifth in the study.
Top 5 Recovering Real Estate Markets in the U.S., 7 out of 10 [based on 512 votes]
There has been a long-lived bit of Apollo moon landing folklore that now appears to be a dead-end affair: microbes on the moon. The lunar mystery swirls around the Apollo 12 moon landing and the return to Earth by moonwalkers of a camera that was part of an early NASA robotic lander – the Surveyor 3 probe. On Nov. 19, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean made a precision landing on the lunar surface in Oceanus Procellarum, Latin for the Ocean of Storms. Their touchdown point was a mere 535 feet (163 meters) from the Surveyor 3 lander -- and an easy stroll to the hardware that had soft-landed on the lunar terrain years before, on April 20, 1967. The Surveyor 3 camera was easy pickings and brought back to Earth under sterile conditions by the Apollo 12 crew. When scientists analyzed the parts in a clean room, they found evidence of microorganisms inside the camera. In short, a small colony of common bacteria -- Streptococcus Mitis -- had stowed away on the device. The astrobiological upshot as deduced from the unplanned experiment was that 50 to 100 of the microbes appeared to have survived launch, the harsh vacuum of space, three years of exposure to the moon's radiation environment, the lunar deep-freeze at an average temperature of minus 253 degrees Celsius, not to mention no access to nutrients, water or an energy source. Now, fast forward to today. NASA's dirty little secret? A diligent team of researchers is now digging back into historical documents -- and even located and reviewed NASA's archived Apollo-era 16 millimeter film -- to come clean on the story. As it turns out, there's a dirty little secret that has come to light about clean room etiquette at the time the Surveyor 3 camera was scrutinized. "The claim that a microbe survived 2.5 years on the moon was flimsy, at best, even by the standards of the time," said John Rummel, chairman of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Panel on Planetary Protection. "The claim never passed peer review, yet has persisted in the press -- and on the Internet -- ever since." The Surveyor 3 camera-team thought they had detected a microbe that had lived on the moon for all those years, "but they only detected their own contamination," Rummel told SPACE.com. A former NASA planetary protection officer, Rummel is now with the Institute for Coastal Science & Policy at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. Rummel, along with colleaguesJudith Allton of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Don Morrison, a former space agency lunar receiving laboratory scientist, recently presented their co-authored paper: "A Microbe on the Moon? Surveyor III and Lessons Learned for Future Sample Return Missions." Poor space probe hygiene Their verdict was given at a meeting on "The Importance of Solar System Sample Return Missions to the Future of Planetary Science," in March at The Woodlands,Texas, sponsored by the NASA Planetary Science Division and Lunar and Planetary Institute. "If 'American Idol' judged microbiology, those guys would have been out in an early round," the research team writes of the way the Surveyor 3 camera team studied the equipment here on Earth. Or put more delicately, "The general scene does not lend a lot of confidence in the proposition that contamination did not occur," co-author Morrison said. For example, participants studying the camera were found to be wearing short-sleeve scrubs, thus arms were exposed. Also, the scrub shirt tails were higher than the flow bench level … and would act as a bellows for particulates from inside the shirt, reports co-author Allton. Other contamination control issues were flagged by the researchers. In simple microbiology 101 speak, "a close personal relationship with the subject ... is not necessarily a good thing," the research team explains. All in all, the likelihood that contamination occurred during sampling of the Surveyor 3 camera was shown to be very real. A cautionary tale On one hand, Rummel emphasized that today’s methods for handling return samples are much more effective at detecting microbes. However, the Surveyor 3 incident back then raises a cautionary flag for the future. "We need to be orders of magnitude more careful about contamination control than was the Surveyor 3 camera-team. If we aren't, samples from Mars could be drowned in Earth life upon return, and in all of that 'noise' we might never have the ability to detect Mars life we may have brought back, too," Rummel said. "We can, and we must, do a better job with a Mars sample return mission." Winner of this year's National Space Club Press Award, Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999. (Original Story)
More than 60 Iraqi cultural artifacts smuggled into the United States, including a limestone statue of an ancient king, were returned to the government of Iraq on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said.A sculpture of the head of Assyrian King Sargon II is on display during a ceremony to repatriate Iraqi cultural items that were smuggled into the United States in Washington, DC [Credit: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]
The move follows investigations led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in New York, Baltimore, Austin, Texas, and New Haven, Connecticut, the department said in a statement.
One of the most significant items that was returned is a limestone statue depicting the head of the Assyrian King Sargon II, an eighth century B.C. ruler.
Immigration and Customs agents seized the looted artifact in August 2008 after an antiquities dealer based in Dubai shipped it to New York. The investigation led to the identification of an international network dealing in illicit cultural artifacts, the statement said.
21 clay reliefs were recovered as part of 'Operation Mummy's Curse' [Credit: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]
Other artifacts repatriated to Iraq include gold-plated items, such as a soap dish, looted from the private airport and palace of executed former President Saddam Hussein.
Bronze objects, including a Luristan ax from early Sumeria, and clay reliefs and glass objects were also returned.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit has returned more than 1,200 items to Iraq in four repatriations since 2008, the statement said.
THE SITTING SWING begins as Irene Watson enters Avalon, a 28-day recovery center. In the following chapters, Irene relays, through flashbacks, her troubled and abusive childhood.Born to parents who had already buried their first child, Alexander, their over protectiveness appeared to be an attempt to compensate this loss.
For from the time she was a young girl, she was never allowed to be far from her mother's side.Irene's actions also seemed to be measured by her dead brother's potential. "Why can't you be more like your brother? was the unspoken reference point by which I was measured."
A very poignant and telling part of the book was the description of the sitting swing: a swing built up against a rose bush. Any swinging (straying) would result in getting stabbed by rose thorns. "The swing was built so I could be watched and slowly learn that I was to be monitored and cared for without fail."
The first noted abuse book place when Irene attempted to run away from home. Her mother catches her a quarter mile away, and drags her back home.
"As I walked indoors...she threw me onto our couch, picked me up by my feet and beat my butt red. She was screaming as I'd never heard her scream before. I was screaming as I'd never heard myself scream before. And the beeting went on and on until I could no longer stand and she could no longer hold me up."
Thus began a legacy of beatings from her mother. Her father would witness the bruises, but never said a word.
Irene continued through school, and high school, and eventually marries a young man, Bob, the most popular boy from her high school.The reader is once again brought back to Irene's stay at Avalon. Irene is forced to look back at her childhood, and her marriage to Bob, and trace the tracks of her co-dependency. In her journal she writes of her inability to express her needs or wants. It seems as though no one wants to listen. Her thoughts of suicide continue.
Things change when Jean, a woman she recognized from church, arrived at Avalon. This wasn't Jean's first experience the recovery center. She returned because during her first stay a lot had been revealed about her life, and her eyes were opened to a number of different issues she wanted to work on. Jean became Irene's first "Avalon friend."
By the conculsion of the 28 day period, Irene was able to create a new script for her life. She realized her own self worth and learned that conceeding to other's wishes did nothing to honor her own worth.
THE SITTING SWING is an incredibly emotional and empowering book of one individual's journey to self realization. A bit graphic at times, but this was demanded in order for the reader to truly experience the horrible childhood Irene was forced to endure. My only complaint would be that the tale skips from Irene's childhood and young adulthood right to the "present." It was apparent that her codepency continued during her marriage, and I believe it would have been helpful for the reader to be able to experience that part of her life. I highly recommend THE SITTING SWING to anyone that is or has experienced codependency.
About the author:
Irene Watson, author of award winning The Sitting Swing, was born and raised in a tiny hamlet of Reno in the northern area of the province of Alberta in Canada. It was a farming community, mostly settled by immigrants from Russia, Ukraine and Poland during the early 1900s.
Two books that had the deepest impact were Change me into Zeus’s Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss, and, Lost and Found by Babette Hughes. Reading both books inspired Irene to write about her own life’s journey, from growing up in a semi-abusive home to finally accepting that experience as a path to a spiritual understanding of life. She now shares her story in The Sitting Swing.
Irene is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.
Irene received her Bachelor of Liberal Studies, Summa Cum Laude, in Psychology from Saint Edward's University in Austin and her Master of Arts, with honors, in Liberal Studies: Psychology, from Regis University in Denver.
Today, Irene lives beside Barton Creek in Austin, Texas with her husband Robert of 43 years, and their Pomeranian, Tafton; their calico cat from a rescue shelter, Patches; and their rescued cockatiels, Clement and Elgin.You can visit her website at http://www.irenewatson.com/ or her blog at www.irenewatson.typepad.com/irenes_weblog.
CONTEST DETAILS! I have two autographed copies of THE SITTING SWING available for giveway.
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Today for our Memory Monday guest, I have Gale! She's an author with a really interesting back story! Check out her bio and hear her talk about childhood favorites!:) Here is a link to her blog- http://www.galeminchew.bravejournal.com
My Bio:
Gale Minchew is a licensed psychologist who resides in East Texas with her husband and two children. In her professional practice, Dr. Minchew specializes in issues related to children and families. However, over the past couple of years, she has consulted with adults and children who have experienced a broad range of paranormal phenomena, as well.
Over the past 14 years, Dr. Minchew has written several works of fiction, in addition to completing a dissertation. While she has become adept at technical writing through her professional practice, Dr. Minchew’s heart is with young adult fiction. She strives to provide a cross-over experience that engenders the creativity and interest the adult population craves while upholding some of the core values that are so lacking in many of the current works of young adult fiction on the market. Shadows of Destiny is Dr. Minchew’s first published fiction novel.
The Sidewalk Ends Here…
I don’t remember any books from my childhood. At least, that’s what I thought. When I first tried to conger up memories of reading, I drew a complete blank. Yes, I couldn’t think of one single book! So, I decided to delve a little further into my mind and came up with the cute teddy bear board book my mom read to me as a toddler, Cinderella, and The Princess and the Pea. I still have that little teddy bear book and will always cherish it. But, can that really be all I remember reading as a child? Pulling those memories from the frayed edges of my mind soon buried me under a wave of book covers and authors. Oh! What about the Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal? I read that series incessantly during my teen years. I remember spending so much money on those books…and it became a challenge…buying, reading, and arranging all those books on my shelf in chronological order. Then, a little further back I remembered some required reading from middle school…Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume and the life and writings of Edgar Allen Poe. I admit, I didn’t care for Judy Blume, but I was fascinated with Edgar Allen Poe…The Raven, The Tell Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, and so on. But, I still wonder why they had Poe as required reading for a 13 year old! It was probably my fascination with Poe that led to my interest in crime/suspense/mystery novels. So, it was only logical that by high school, I had moved on to Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Anne Rice.
I continued to ponder the books I read as a child and found that with all the authors, titles, and genres flowing through my mind, I continuously returned to fourth grade. It was a magical year, I suppose…a time for trading stickers with my friends, staying out of the clutches of boys chasing girls on the playground, and my first introduction to poetry. Now, I admit I would have done almost anything to not go outside for recess, as you can imagine! Quite coincidentally, my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Joyce Sigler, had an exciting project for me and a friend in lieu of play time. At recess, she would tape a large sheet of white paper on the wall and place the overhead projector in just the right spot for maximum size. She would then place a transparency on the overhead glass, and my friend and I would carefully trace the letters and drawings onto the plain white paper. That simple job made me feel important! And, unbeknownst to me at the time, I learned about poetry and how to make that funny little lower case ‘a’. I mean, who really writes an ‘a’ like that? Ultimately, I ended up reading the entire book from which the transparencies were made. What an exciting experience at such an impressionable time in my young life!
You may wonder what poetry could possibly fill a fourth grader with so much excitement. This poetry was magical, complete with funny drawings…a book filled of stories such as Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who would not take the garbage out, a crocodile who went to the dentist, and little Peggy Ann McKay who was so sick she could not go to school today! Yes, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein became my favorite book that year. That year became one of my most memorable years in school and, by my estimation, served as a catalyst for my growing love of books.
I now share Mr. Silverstein’s books with my own children. Not only Where the Sidewalk Ends, but A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, and The Giving Tree, as well. Will my fourth grader have the same memories about reading these books as I have? Probably not, but I hope to make an impression as great as that given to me all those years ago by one very special fourth grade teacher and Shel Silverstein!
What a fun post Gale!! I'm pretty much the only person I know who didn't love Shel Silverstein growing up, and I tried to read him a while ago and... eh. Still don't love. But I loved hearing your story! And even though I don't love Shel, his are definitely books I'll have for my future kids! Thanks so much for guesting for me today!
Paradise by Jill Alexander is a book I'm really torn on. I've had a hard time deciding how I felt about this book overall because I felt so different when I finished from when I started. I asked on Twitter if my review could just be — "I loved this book. Until the end. When I didn't... " — I know it's not really enough to be a review on it's own, but it actually sums up how I felt about this book quite nicely. So, I'm saying it.
This is a book about so many things — music, passion, first love, parents, family, life, trust, pain, hope, etc. But at it's core, it's the story of a young girl, filled with more than she knows what to do with, trying to figure out who she is, and where she belongs.
I think the strongest part of this book is the characterization. Alexander has created such a strong and unique cast of characters and each character has their own very distinct voice. I was amazed at how much Alexander was able to convey about each character with so little. Cal is the perfect example of this. The only time we hear his thoughts is through the lyrics he writes in his song journal and yet those few lyrics tell us so much about him and how he feels and how he views life. It's amazing. But, all of the characters are full and whole and so well developed. I could go on and on and each has something unique to bring to the story that no one else would be able to offer.
I also loved Paisley's character. She's fierce and strong and a little unsure of herself at times. Gabriela is a completely new experience for Paisley. He comes from Paradise, Texas, so that's what she starts calling him and it seems to fit him really well. He's good looking, confident (or cocky, depending on the day and who you ask) and he's into her. Like, really into her. But Paisley has an interesting mom. One who has drilled and drilled and drilled it into her that she is not to get pregnant and stuck in their small town. So, Paisley has worn an abstinence ring for years and because she is so focused on her music, boys have never really been a priority before, so it isn't a big deal to her. But Paradise makes her starting thinking about things and makes her wonder how she really feels about it.
I loved this part of Paisley's character. I know that teens have sex. Really, I do. I promise. I know that it happens. But I also know that it doesn't happen as often as media makes us think it does. There are teens out there who have never had sex and don't feel ready for it as teenagers, and that's okay! So, Paisley is working out for herself whether or not she is ready to make that choice. And she thinks about it. A lot. Which I thought was incredible. It's a huge choice and it is one that, once made, you cannot take back. I loved the line where Paisley and Paradise are making out and Paradise tries to go farther than she is ready for. She backs away and he tells her that she doesn't have to be afraid to say yes to him. She replies with something along the lines of, I know. I'm not afraid to say yes, but I'm also not afraid to say no. I think more teens need to realize this. Especially if they are feeling under pressure to make a choice they aren't sure they are ready for. Be sure. And if you are not, there is nothing wrong with saying no.
I also thought it was very interesting to watch Paisley's interaction with her mother and the ways that Paisley and Lacey (her older sister) both handled their mother's controlling nature. She's so worried that they are going to end up like her — stuck in a tiny town because they got pregnant in high school (even though she is still married to their dad and he is awesome!) so she takes the extreme on everything. Boys are terrible and forbidden, as is anything she doesn't believe will help them leave the town. So Paisley hides the fact that she's in a band, hides a huge part of her true self from her mother and you definitely feel the strain of that begin to weigh in throughout the book.
It's such a strong book. It's a realistic story full of believable characters, people that I would love to know in real life. This book is an example of Contemporary YA at it's finest and a great example of why I love Contemporary. Why it's always my favorite genre. Or, at least it was... Until that ending...
I don't want to say to much about the ending of this book, because not only has every review I've read for this book talked about the ending, but also because it is something that really should be experienced for yourself and I really don't want to spoil it for anyone. I knew when I started the book that the ending was going to be shocking and huge, but I didn't know anything more than that. To be honest, it gave me serious anxiety when I reached the part of the book where I knew the shocking moment was close. I stalled myself at those last chapters for a long time because I was afraid to see what happened.
And the thing is, I didn't like it. It was shocking, it was a big thing, but I felt like it was there just to be shocking. Not because it really added to the story, not because it was necessarily the best place for the story to go, but because it made for some awesome drama. Maybe that's not really fair of me to say, or to assume. But it's how I felt reading it, and what you take away as the reader is ultimately what the story becomes. To me, the ending is one of the absolute most important parts of a book. An ending can turn a really great book into something terrible (I'm looking at you, Julie of the Wolves) or it can take a book I'm fairly lukewarm about and make it into something really special (mad props to The Bronze Bow). Unfortunately, this book was more of the former. While the ending didn't completely ruin the book for me, it definitely changed (and lowered) my overall feelings for the book.
Even though the ending was a disappointment, this is still a book that I would recommend to people, and I'd actually even recommend it strongly to most people. Alexander is a great writer. She writes strong characters and I'm amazed by how much she's able to convey with this story. I just wish that it had remained that way through to the end.
*Disclaimer — I received an ARC from the author through the Teen Book Scene for a fair and unbiased review.
I have always loved reading (bet that was a hard one to figure out) but I've also really loved to learn. School was always very fun and rewarding for me, and I just kinda soak up random facts, both relevant and not like a sponge. When I learned that I could combine both reading and learning, I was in nerd heaven. (but whatevs... I was always a cool nerd)
Anyway, I discovered the Dear America series, written about fictional young girls in real periods in history. At least, from what I remember all the girls were fictitious... (Some of them might have been real people, but I don't think so...) I loved these books. Like, so much. I loved them that now, anytime I go into a used bookstore, I try to find copies. Many of them are still in print, but they are paperbacks and the new covers are... not as awesome. But the original books printed were all this gorgeous hardcover with deckled edges and a ribbon bookmark. Beautiful.
And they all had really awesome names like, Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie, Winter of the Red Snow and I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly.
Each of the books were written as if they were the journals of these fictional characters. One girl lived through the sinking of the Titanic, another was a Texas girl during the fight at the Alamo, one was captured by Indians, another a girl living through the Civil War. Each of these 'girls' wrote about her experiences, living through an important part of history. There were so many of these books written and I absolutely loved them.
My parents gave me two for Christmas one year, and I read them over and over and over. I read them so many times, it's been years now, but I'm pretty sure I could still recite passages from them. Standing in the Light:The Captive Diary of Catharine Carey Logan and A Line in the Sand: The Alamo Diary of Lucinda Lawrence. I was initially disappointed, because I had been hoping for the Titanic story (at that age, I was absolutely obsessed with all things Titanic) but my parents knew that I had already read it, and wanted to get me books I had not yet read. And after I read these two, I wanted to know more, so much more about both the Alamo and what it was like for both the Indians and the settlers during the 1700s. And also — I still really miss Snow Hunter.
I also loved that the books have information in the back and what is and isn't historically accurate in the book, as well as additional information that can help guide learning about the time period — real journal entries, images, etc. It was fascinating and I loved every part of these books.
Perhaps this isn't the most coherent and detailed Memory Monday post ever, but this is still most definitely a series that I loved, a series that I continue to love, even though I haven't read any of the books in far too long. It's a series I'll also continue to buy when I see it, in the hopes that my future children will be just as interested in reading as I am.
Side note — There is another series called My Name is America, that is basically the same thing, only for boys, about boys, with boy main characters. I have never read them, because young Ashley reading these did not want to have some boy book, because, well, Duh, girls were the best (see Memory Monday post about Girls Know Best) . But I would like to buy and read them some day, both so that I can learn more about certain time periods, and so that future boy children can read them, in case they feel about girls as I did about boys.: P
Do any of you remember reading the Dear America series? What about My Name is America? I'd love to hear your thoughts on either series if you've read them!:)
They had her at hello. From her first moments in Charleston and Savannah, and on the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, novelist Karen While was in love. Was it the history, the architecture, the sound of the sea, the light, the traditions, the people, the lore? Check all of the above. Add Karen’s storytelling talent, her endless curiosity about relationships and emotions, and her sensitivity to the rhythms of the south, and it seems inevitable that this mix of passions would find its way into her work.
Known for award winning novels such as Learning to Breathe, the recently announced Southern Independent Bookseller Association’s 2009 Book of the Year Award nomination for The House on Tradd Street, and for the highly praised The Memory of Water, Karen has already shared the coastal Lowcountry and Charleston with readers. Spanning eighty years, Karen’s new book, THE LOST HOURS, now takes them to Savannah and its environs. There a shared scrapbook and a necklace of charms unleash buried memories, opening the door to the secret lives of three women, their experiences, and the friendships that remain entwined even beyond the grave, and whose grandchildren are determined to solve the mysteries of their past.
Karen, so often inspired in her writing by architecture and history, has set much of THE LOST HOURS at Asphodel Meadows, a home and property inspired by the English Regency styled house at Hermitage Plantation along the Savannah River, and at her protagonist’s “Savannah gray brick” home in Monterey Square, one of the twenty-one squares that still exist in the city. Italian and French by ancestry, a southerner and a storyteller by birth, Karen has lived in many different places. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she has also lived in Texas, New Jersey, Louisiana, Georgia, Venezuela and England, where she attended the American School in London. She returned to the states for college and graduated from New Orleans’ Tulane University. Hailing from a family with roots firmly set in Mississippi (the Delta and Biloxi), Karen notes that “searching for home brings me to the south again and again.”
Always, Karen credits her maternal grandmother Grace Bianca, to whom she’s dedicated THE LOST HOURS, with inspiring and teaching her through the stories she shared for so many years. Karen also notes the amount of time she spent listening as adults visited in her grandmother’s Mississippi kitchen, telling stories and gossiping while she played under the table. She says it started her on the road to telling her own tales. The deal was sealed in the seventh grade when she skipped school and read Gone With The Wind. She knew—just knew—she was destined to grow up to be either Scarlet O’Hara or a writer.
Karen’s work has appeared on the South East Independent Booksellers best sellers list. Her novel The Memory of Water, was WXIA-TV’s Atlanta & Company Book Club Selection. Her work has been reviewed in Southern Living, Atlanta Magazine and by Fresh Fiction, among many others, and has been adopted by numerous independent booksellers for book club recommendations and as featured titles in their stores. This past year her 2007 novel Learning to Breathe received several honors, notably the National Readers’ Choice Award.
In addition to THE LOST HOURS, Karen White’s books include The House on Tradd Street, The Memory of Water, Learning to Breathe, Pieces of the Heart and The Color of Light. She lives in the Atlanta metro area with her family where she is putting the finishing touches on her next novel The Girl on Legare Street.
You can visit Karen White's website at http://www.karen-white.com/.
Pump Up Your Book Promotion “We take books to the virtual level!” http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/
My Review:
When Piper was six years old, she helped her grandfather bury a box given to her by her grandmother. This box is forgotten until, after her grandparents death, she seeks answers regarding her families history that no one is able to answer. Piper retrieves the box, and inside she finds aged scrapbook pages, a faded newspaper article about an infant that was found dead, and a gold charm neckace. In a search of her grandmother's home she also finds a secret room containing a baby crib. After reading several of the scrapbook pages, she becomes determined to track down a woman that was very close to her grandmother, mentioned as being one of her closest friends as a child. Yet, her grandmother has never mentioned her name. Her grandmother suffered from Alzheimers, and Piper experiences a great deal of remorse at not knowing or discovering more about her grandmother while she was still alive. He vows to stop at nothing to find out more about her grandmother's past. She soon discovers that there is a past that has remained hidden for some time, and individuals that want it to remain this way.
THE LOST HOURS takes the reader on a trip through several generations. It highlights the importance of family, and taking the time to know and maintain ties to older generations. It grabs and takes hold of your heart from the very beginning. You become a character in the book, you experience the things the characters experience. It takes hold of your emotions like very few books do. I treasure the time I spent reading this book, and regret the moment when I read the last few pages.
This book really hit home for me. My grandmother has been experiencing bouts of dementia for the past several years. Oftentimes she doesn't remember her husband and often has flashbacks of her childhood. She's not the Grandma I remember as a child, and I regret not taking the time to learn more about her life. I hope I still get the opportunity to do so, if not with my grandmother, then with the other members of my family.
I'd been wanting to read a YA vampire novel for awhile when I picked up Blue Bloods by Melissa De La Cruz. It came at the perfect time too, because I'd just finished The Jungle and I wanted to read something that wouldn't take a lot out of me. When I first opened the book I considered putting it back down, the first few pages are somewhat painful as far as writing. I decided to persevere though, reminding myself that I wanted something nice and easy. The writing does get better as you go on through the novel, or maybe you just get more used to it.
Typical to books about high school this cast as popular kids and rebels. I would say the main character is Schuyler Van Alen, a rebel. She lives with her grandmother and her mom is in the hospital with a coma. She has never really known her mom since she has been in a coma most of her life, but the doctors say she could wake up any day, so Schuyler visits her every weekend and reads the newspaper to her. Schuyler's best friend is Oliver who follows her around like a lost puppy. The friendship is really all about the two of them, but they let the new guy Dylan tag along because he likes them and because he adds to their mysterious aura.
On the opposite side is Mimi, the queen of the school who is ridiculously rich and fearless. There is also her brother Jack who is good at everything and gorgeous. Mimi and Jack seem to have some weird kind of Flowers in the Attic thing going on, but no one pays attention to them because they are perfect. On this side there is a new girl named Bliss. She comes from Texas and is trying to learn how to fit in the New York high class scene.
And this is how everything goes, until a mysterious death comes to the school and turns everything on its head. Soon people who are not supposed to talk are becoming allies. All because of The Committee. Everyone thinks The Committee is a place for the really rich people to hang out and plan parties, which is partially true but there is more to it than that. When Schuyler Van Alen gets invited to The Committee Mimi is furious. It doesn't help that her cousin Jack seems to be interested in Schuyler either.
So basically this is mediocre writing with a somewhat interesting plot. This the first in a series of books and I think I will probably read the next in the series. The plot really starts to pick up towards the end and I felt driven to finish the book so it wasn't all bad. It's just not The Luxe or anything.
This novel earned a C. I read this book for the First in a Series Challenge.
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Lanie Coates is the mother of three young boys. Supporting her husband's dream to become a professional musician, she's agreed to leave everything behind in Texas and move to Cambridge, MS. For the past fifteen years, she's devoted her entire life to her family. Her passion with art and painting is soon replaced with diapers and crayons. Her body, much like her life, is unrecognizable. She's lost herself, and she desperately seeks to find some semblance of the person she was. She begins to devote time to herself, and begins going the gym each night, and even signs up for a photography class. This class helps her discover a passion that was unknown to her. Unfortunately, though passion is growing in the heart of someone else as well, and it's not her husband! Just as Lanie begins to feel at peace with herself, her world is turned over and she must struggle to fix it.
EVERYONE IS BEAUTIFUL is a very honest look at hectic life of a mom. There are moments where you will laugh out loud, and moments where you will cry. As a mother of two boys myself, I could completely sympathize with Lanie's character. This is a must read of any mom, no matter the age of the child.
About the Author:
Author: Katherine Center
Katherine Center is the author of The Bright Side of Disaster. She graduated from Vassar College, where she won the Vassar College Fiction Prize, and received an MA in fiction from the University of Houston. She served as fiction co-editor for the literary magazine Gulf Coast, and her graduate thesis, Peepshow, a collection of stories, was a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. A former freelance writer and teacher, she lives in Houston with her husband and two young children.
