Posted on 2 Comments

Photography and Sage Brant

Sage Brant is a photographer

Sage Brant is a photographer

[typography font=”Dancing Script” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]Sage Brant[/typography]  sees the world through her camera lens. She focuses on the things that matter to her: family, nature, and Asheville, North Carolina.  She doesn’t have time for anyone or anything that may derail her future career plans. Sage is not your average college student. When she isn’t in school, Sage can be found working, visiting with her family and best friend, and pursuing her passion for photography. She isn’t giggling over cute college boys, and she isn’t searching for love.

Posted on Leave a comment

My Book Review Policy and Reviews of Midnight Crossroad and Sea of Shadows BUEP2

Bushnell Unscripted Logo

Bushnell Unscripted Logo

In this week’s Bushnell Unscripted Podcast, I talk about my policy regarding book reviews, and I include my book reviews for Midnight Crossroad and Sea of Shadows.

Below are just a few elements of the information available in the podcast. Note: Show notes are not complete transcriptions of the podcast show.

[typography font=”Smythe” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]My Book Review Policy[/typography]

I share my thoughts on five-star review systems, including what categories I believe deserve close scrutiny and warrant poor evaluations.

What are your thoughts on the five-star review system? Do you like it, or do you think it causes more confusion than it is worth? Is a simple thumbs up or down scale sufficient? Do you think people should be allowed to simply state that they couldn’t finish the book and that is a sufficient review? Let me know what you think!

[typography font=”Smythe” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris[/typography]

Listen to the podcast for my full review of the book!

Midnight Crossroad book cover by Charlaine Harris

Book: Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

Pages: Hardcover, 320 pages

Published: 2014

The Day Shift, book two in the Midnight Crossroad trilogy, will be published in Spring 2015.

Having stumbled across Ms. Harris by way of the television show True Blood, I quickly sought out her Sookie Stackhouse series and completed my feast with her other titles.

Midnight Crossroad is a tale of action, mystery, and intrigue! At the heart of the book is a great little town filled with interesting and comical characters who bond over their task of solving the mystery of what happened to the girlfriend of one their beloved citizens.

Let me say this: Midnight Crossroad is not about Sookie Stackhouse. I’m disappointed to discover that some readers are comparing this book to the Stackhouse series, and that is not a fair assessment. I’ll never understand why readers treat their beloved authors with such disdain when the author chooses to write a different series or create a new world or characters.

While there are elements of the supernatural and paranormal, the story doesn’t revolve around those elements.

Have you read it? What did you think of your visit to Midnight, Texas?

[typography font=”Smythe” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]Sea of Shadows by Kelley Armstrong[/typography]

Listen to the podcast for my full review of the book!

Sea of Shadows book cover by Kelley Armstrong

Book: Sea of Shadows by Kelley Armstrong

Pages: 392, paperback

Published: 2014

Empire of Night, book two in the Age of Legend series, will be published in April 2015.

Sea of Shadows by Kelley Armstrong isn’t a book that I would normally have picked up, but I’m glad I did. This young adult, epic high-fantasy, supernatural, and paranormal read is just the ticket for anyone looking to step outside of their reading comfort zone and explore a new world.

Do you use certain genres as palate cleansers between other books? Paranormal and supernatural reads are genres I turn to to cleanse the reading palate. I typically read very heavy literary pieces back to back, and these fun genres give me an escape from those subjects and help free my mind.

I haven’t read any of Ms. Armstrong’s previous work, but I can say that if they are anything like this read, I’m sure to quickly devour them. I can’t wait to find out what happens next in the Age of Legend series.

Ms. Armstrong offers some great extras on her website that I encourage you to check out.

Thanks for tuning in again!

Keep love and kindness on repeat!

 

Music Credit:

Monkeys Spinning Monkeys Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 

Posted on 2 Comments

My Bookshelf: Woolf, Hawthorne, King, Rowling, and Immortal Poems

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

I’ve started a new Instagram project for the books I own. I’m taking a photo a day of my books, hoping to both inventory them and inspire others to pick up a book that they may never have considered reading.

I own a lot of books, and this becomes painfully apparent every time I move. I lived in one house for thirteen years, and in the past three years, I’ve moved three times. The first move was cross country. The second move was two hours away, and the last one was across town. My books have taken up the majority of the boxes involved in those moves. Some girls hoard shoes and clothes, but I simply love my books.

I confess that I haven’t read all of the books I own. I own duplicates of certain titles because I have either fooled myself into thinking that I don’t own the title, or I just fell in the love with the cover of the book. It really is an affliction, but considering the variety of issues I could have, I’m content to be the woman with a constant back pain due to the moving of her book collection.

I started my project with A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. This is my college copy. It is highlighted, underlined, and well-loved. Every time I look at this book, I’m reminded of Woolf’s suicide and the great literary loss the world suffered with her passing.

I stumbled across this reading of her suicide note, and I’m haunted by the imagery and sense of desperation her words evoke. I know some people feel her letter should not be available for public consumption, but I disagree. The last words penned by this great author deserve to be remembered. This rare glimpse into the true composition of a writer is breathtakingly beautiful and harrowing.

from A Room of One’s Own:

All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point–a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved.”

I love Nathaniel Hawthorne. I have three stand-alone copies of The House of Seven Gables, and two are the same paperback edition. I’m sure I have other copies of his work in my anthologies.

“Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely-peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.”

I love this paperback edition of Carrie by Stephen King. I haven’t watched the movie since I was a small child, but I’m adding it to my Halloween cue this year. Whenever I think of Carrie, I think of Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of the character. She did a wonderful job bringing this tortured soul to the screen.

“Then the laughter, disgusted, contemptuous, horrified, seemed to rise and bloom into something jagged and ugly, and the girls were bombarding her with tampons and sanitary napkins, some from purses, some from the broken dispenser on the wall. They flew like snow and the chant became: ‘Plug it up, plug it up, plug it up, plug it—‘”

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling was a featured book at my local library. At the time that I read it, there wasn’t much buzz in the United States about the series, and I felt as though I’d found a great little gem of a book. I told my husband that I really liked the book, and he read it and liked it, too.

Our local Borders bookstore (how can they be gone?) held parties for those who had pre-ordered the new titles in the series. It was great fun to stand in line with other readers who had fallen in love with Harry Potter. That excitement started with this book.

“‘Hagrid,’ he said quietly, ‘I think you must have made a mistake. I don’t think I can be a wizard.'”

Immortal Poems of the English Language: 447 British and American Masterpieces by 150 Poets an anthology edited by Oscar Williams.

This little beauty of a book was published in 1960 and was available for purchase at sixty cents! There are so many beautiful poems in this book. Below is one of my favorites.

“How Do I Love Thee?” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight.

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints–I love with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.