48 Hour Book Challenge

MotherReader is hosting the 4th Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge on her blog. Go visit to see the other participants and add your name if you are interested.

Here are the basic guidelines:

1. The weekend is June 5–7, 2009. Read and blog for any 48-hour period within the Friday-to-Monday-morning window. Start no sooner than 7:00 a.m. on Friday the fifth and end no later than 7:00 a.m. Monday. So, go from 7:00 p.m. Friday to 7:00 p.m. on Sunday... or maybe 7:00 a.m. Saturday to 7:00 a.m. Monday works better for you. But the 48 hours do need to be in a row. That said, during that 48-hour period you may still have gaps of time in which you can’t read, and that’s fine. (In the middle of the three different challenge weekends I’ve had to go to work, attend a ballet recital, and drive for a Girl Scout event.)


2. The books should be about fifth-grade level and up. Adult books are fine, especially if adult book bloggers want to play. If you are generally a picture book blogger, consider this a good time to get caught up on all those wonderful books you’ve been hearing about. With the change in the way prizes are awarded, graphic novels can be included in the reading. One audiobook can also be included in your time and book total.


3. It’s your call as to how much you want to put into it. If you want to skip sleep and showers to do this, go for it. If you want to be a bit more laid back, fine. But you have to put something into it or it’s not a challenge. Twelve hours is the benchmark for winning prizes.


4. The length of the reviews or notes written in your blog are not an issue. You can write a sentence, paragraph, or a full-length review. The time spent reviewing counts in your total time.


5. New this year, you can include some amount of time reading other participant's blogs, commenting on participating blogs and Facebook pages, and Twittering about your progress. For every five hours, you can add one hour of networking. This time counts in your total time.


6. On your blog, state when you are starting the challenge with a specific entry on that day and leave the link to that post at the MotherReader sign-in page with the trusty Mr. Linky.


7. When you finish, write a final summary that clearly indicates hours - including partial hours - you spent reading/reviewing/networking, the number of books read, and any other comments you want to make on the experience. It needs to be posted no later than noon, EST on Monday, June 8th. Also, check-in at the Finish Line post on MotherReader that will be posted Sunday and please link to that post from your final summary post.

I plan to start on Friday June 5, 2009 at 8pm and finish Sunday June 7 at 8pm.
This gives me time to settle in after evening routine and also to get home on Sunday night after spending the day at my parents.

I will be out part of the day on Saturday for my son's end-of-baseball party and probably will catch up my Sunday blogging all at once that evening since I will be at my parents. I will be reading, but won't have as much access to a computer.

I'm excited. I haven't done one of these before, but I think it will be fun. Besides I seriously need to catch up on reading and reviews!

Review: A Morning Like This by Deborah Bedford and a Giveaway

A Morning Like This by Deborah Bedford

rating: 4 of 5 stars
From booksfree.com:

David and Abby Treasure seem to have everything together: a perfect marriage, a perfect son, and a perfect life. But one simple phone call turns their world upside down. Years ago, David had an affair outside of his marriage, and though he never knew it, the affair produced a daughter. Now his former lover calls with heartbreaking news: his daughter is dying of leukemia. Her only hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant-from David or his son.

Can David and Abby set aside their betrayal and anger to save a little girl's life? If they can make it through, they may find that their love for one another and their faith in God can be redeemed . . . and grow stronger than ever before.

I received this book from Faithwords via Twitter. It is a reprint of an earlier Deborah Bedford book so this isn't new. But let me tell you - it is a wonderful book.

This book is a look into what everyone believes is the perfect marriage and family even those participating, even David whose indiscretion in the first year of marriage is known to him but not to Abby. Then his life is shattered when he learns of his daughter. A daughter he never knew and the fact that she is sick and needs the bone marrow transplant.

Reading this book you get all sides. You see it from David's side and you see it from Abby's side. You get glimpses from Braden (their son), from Susan (the long-ago lover) and also from Sam (the daughter). All of them are human and their mistakes, pride and love show through. They all go through changes and I loved reading about how the changes came about.

This book is very moving. The characters very real, but it gives you hope. It gives you hope that even when trust is destroyed that it can be rebuilt especially when you have God in your life to help you with it.

I can't recommend this book enough. It's real, it's timely in this age of infidelity and divorce and it's compelling. I picked this up and did not stop reading it until I reached the end. It drew me into their lives and kept me there wanting to know more. I will also be searching out this author's backlist.

I'm giving away my gently read copy of A Morning Like This by Deborah Bedford so one of my readers can enjoy this book also.

To enter:

1. leave a comment and make sure you leave a way for me to contact you if it's not in your profile (this is 1 entry)
2. If you have read any of Deborah Bedford's other books let me know how it was - just a brief note in a comment (for an additional entry)
3. Twitter about this review and contest and let me know - use @cfulcher so I will see it (for an additional entry)
4. Follow me on Twitter (cfulcher) or here on Blogger and let me know (for an additional entry for each one) - if you already follow just let me know.

Contest will go through next Friday, June 12 at midnight and I'll draw the winner over the weekend.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Friday Finds - June 5th

Please enter my contest for Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz below you can enter through Saturday at midnight - I'll draw the winner on Sunday or Monday and post.


Friday Finds is hosted over on Should Be Reading. It's all about what great books you have heard about/discovered in the past week. Here is my entry, and head over to the Should Be Reading Blog to read others and find books to add to your TBR pile!

I've been perusing Bookcloseouts.com's 1.99 sale and here are some that I have found:

When Winifred 'Freddie' McGinty, a troubled teen possessing extraordinary powers enters her life, Cass Shipton , while showing Freddie how to harness her gifts, has a horrifying vision of a family that recently disappeared, and, calling on her circle of friends, discovers that Freddie is linked to the killer. Original. 15,000 first printing.



Though well-bred, fashionable, and educated, Isabella Goodrich feels useless as a spinster in a world of matchmaking and social gatherings. She'd rather be practicing her skills at the sword and discussing philosophy than making painful small talk at ridiculous parties. Then Isabella meets the mysterious Phineas Snowe, and she becomes convinced she is meant to follow him to the mission fields of the Orient. As a woman with an independent nature, she sneaks away and boards a ship to China. What she discovers about her companion and the world beyond Britain's shores draws her into a greater quest - and deeper love - than she could have imagined.

The Bell Witch was around long before the Blair Witch was fabricated for scares. In 1818, a supernatural force haunted the Bell family of Red River, Tennessee and eventually caused the death of one its members. A local schoolteacher, Richard Powell, recorded these chilling events for his daughter, but the manuscript disappeared. Then in 1998, novelist Brent Monahan discovers the long-missing manuscript and after verifying its legitimacy translates it into a book, An American Haunting: The Bell Witch, now widely considered the greatest ghost story ever written.


Life is rewarding for Samuel Truelove. He's a gifted heart surgeon, he's married to the love of his life, and he has a beautiful daughter. But when he misdiagnoses his daughter's illness and is suddenly called away to perform emergency surgery, a deadly cascade of events is set in motion. After multiple tragedies, Sam withdraws into himself, takes a leave of absence, and joins a small town clinic. His search for redemption and healing will test the idea that God has the power - and the will - to repair what seems irreparably broken.


Down and out New York PI John Docker has a past he'd rather forget. So when he finds himself in Berlin in 1948, just after the Russians have blockaded the city in a move that ultimately sparks the Cold War, it's against his better judgement. Docker is there to track down some stolen treasure - the Cross of Christ, a legendary religious relic that was last in the hands of the Nazis and is now missing. Reluctantly he collaborates with British Military Policeman Captain Beauchamp, who is on the trail of the murderers of Nazi atomic scientist Friedrich Kessler, found tortured and dead in a bombed-out Berlin hotel. Jailed Nazi architect Albert Speer has agreed to give Beauchamp some information on Kessler's killers - and the atomic secrets they may have been after - in return for intelligence on the Cross. Against the backdrop of the Berlin airlift, Docker and Beauchamp race against the clock in a bid to recover the atomic secrets and the Cross.

The tattoos on his arms still reading "Live by the Sword" and "Die by the Sword," Aramis Black is ready for a fresh start. Determined to set aside his violent tendencies, he opens an espresso shop in Nashville and begins to put his childhood memories behind him. The past isn't finished with him, though. One ordinary day at the shop, a man is shot before his eyes, speaking dying words to Aramis that are all too familiar. Now Aramis must uncover the conspiracy behind a centuries-old mystery - and the shocking truth of his mother's death. Will Aramis be able to conquer his past? Or will evil get the best of him?


Washington D.C. A woman is found murdered in her own home; her throat slit, her corpse brutalized, subjected to the most appalling torture before she died. A piece of incriminating evidence leads to the swift arrest of a local drug dealer. Case closed. But local cop Jack Cassian has questions. The victim came from one of the city's wealthiest families. So why was she living in such a rough part of town? Why is her mother, the icily formidable Lydia Chapin, so hostile and unhelpful. Teaming up with the dead woman's sister, Sydney, to find the answers, Cassian's investigation leads him from the crack dens of the inner city to the posh country clubs and gilded offices of the nation's political elite. The answers lead only to further questions - and, before they know it, Sydney and Cassian are slipping deep into a labyrinth of money, power, and deceit to uncover a decades-old conspiracy that could rock the nation. Can they survive long enough to learn the secrets of . . . the Betrayed?

Hugh Wellesley is an average man with an average sort of life until the night he learns that a corpse has been found, floating in the river. It is Sylvie, his mistress, and as suspicions swell, Hugh's once simple, even boring, problems turn interesting, dangerous . . . and frightening.





Okay I'm going to quit now - these are just some (and you can see I only got through the b's) that caught my eye. Check out the sale - lots of books for $1.99 - great service - I've ordered from them several times and no I'm not employed by them. I just got the email today and saw the books and thought it would make a good Friday Finds post. Have a wonderful weekend.

Summer Reading Blitz Reading List

Shauna over at the Reading and Ruminations Blog is hosting a Summer Reading Blitz. Definitely go by and check it out - there are giveaways and she's donating to charity for all comments during June. I'm joining in on the reading part of the challenge. Hey I finished 21 books last month - will it really be that hard to go for 30? Well I'm going to try.

So here is my base post to list my reading for the month of June and how I am doing with my Summer Reading Blitz.

1. A Morning Like This by Deborah Beford - Review and Giveaway
   
2. Missing Pieces by Joy Fielding
3. I Like It Like That (Gossip Girl #5) by Cecily Von Ziegesar
4. Flirting With Temptation by Kelley St. John - Review
5. The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale - Review and Giveaway
   
6. You're the One That I Want by Cecily Von Ziegesar
7. Once Smitten, Twice Shy by Lori Wilde (Wedding Veil Wishes #2) - Review
8. Fragment by Warren Fahy - Review
   
9. The Disappearance of Isabel Dos Santos by Margaret Mascarenhas - Review
10. The Texas Billionaire's Bride by Crystal Green
    

Booking Through Thursday - Sticky

Here is this week's Booking Through Thursday question:

I saw this over at Shelley’s, and thought it sounded like a great question for all of you:

“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”

Here's my list (I was bad and I kept going to 17):

1. It by Stephen King
2. A Morning Like This by Deborah Bedford
3. Forever by Judy Blume
4. Are You There God, It's Me Margaret by Judy Blume
5. Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
6. Wind Dancer by Jamie Carie
7. Deadfall by Robert Liparulo
8. Divine Evil by Nora Roberts
9. Heartsick by Chelsea Cain
10. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
11. Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult
12. Body Surfing by Anita Shreve
13. Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg
14. Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
15. Death Angel by Linda Howard
16. The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury
17. They Did it With Love by Kate Morgenroth

Check out more lists here.

May Summary

Before I start my May Summary - a little contest maintenance to take care of, first the winner of Strange Angels is Kristi! I have emailed you for your address.

Second, please check out my Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz contest, there are still a few days left to enter.

Now onto my May Summary:

In May I read 21 books. It breaks down like this:

• 3 from the library
• 11 from home
• 7 from booksfree

• 14 were books (the kind you hold - paperback/hardback/trade)
  
• 2 were ARCs
• 2 were ebooks
• 3 were audiobooks

The books I read were:

1. Dead Until Dark - Sookie Stackhouse #1 - Charlaine Harris (audiobook)
2. Wind Dancer - Jamie Carie (church library)
3. Untamed - House of Night #4 - P.C. and Kristin Cast (mine)
4. Deadfall - Robert Liparulo (booksfree)
5. The Scarlet Letterman - Bard Academy #2 - Cara Lockwood (booksfree)
6. Amorous Liasons - Sarah Mayberry (audiobook)
7. Ghostwriter - Travis Thrasher (ARC) - Review
8. The Devil's Footprints - Amanda Stevens (mine)
9. Gun Lake - Travis Thrasher (library) - Review
10. Flawless - Nate McCormick #2 - Joshua Spanogle (mine)
11. All I Want is Everything - Cecily Von Ziegesar - Gossip Girl #3 (booksfree) - Review
12. Because I'm Worth It - Cecily Von Ziegesar - Gossip Girl #4 (booksfree) - Review
13. Trial By Fire - Firefighters of Station Five #1 - Jo Davis (booksfree) - Review
14. Sweethearts - Sara Zarr (booksfree) - Review
15. Look Again - Lisa Scottoline (library)
16. Strange Angels - Lili St. Crow (ARC) - Review
17. Admission - Jean Hanff Korelitz (mine) - Review
18. Under His Skin - Titan Sisters #1 (ebook)
19. Montana Sky - Nora Roberts (audiobook)
20. A Little Light Magic - Joy Nash (mine) - Review
21. The 8th Confession - Women's Murder Club #8 - James Patterson (ebook)

A really good month for me. I'm already at 3 books for June, so it looks like another good month. I just need to get some reviews posted!

Mailbox Monday - June 1st

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. To see this weeks list of participants go here.

was a good week for me. I received several ARCs and books to review - most through Shelf Awareness, but some from other sources. Here is my stack:






The Texas Billionaire's Bride by Crystal Green (the first in The Foleys & The McCords miniseries) - I received this one from the author and can't wait to read it.

A Morning Like This by Deborah Bedford - I received this through a twitter request from the Faithwords imprint. I believe this book is a reprint, but it sounds wonderful.


The Last Ember by Daniel Levin - this one is due out in August and sounds like a great suspense thriller.

Fragment by Warren Fahy - this one is due out in a few weeks and I can't wait to start it


The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale - this sounds like a great fun book.




Here were my books received from booksfree:

I'm addicted to the gossip girls series, so the first two are #5 and 6. They will be quick, fun and easy reads. The second two are Flat Out Sexy by Erin McCarthy and The Preacher by Darren Dillman. Both of these sound really good. I will read these in between books for review.

I also got a whole bunch of library books. I didn't take a picture but here is what I got:

The Bay at Midnight by Diane Chamberlain

Second Opinion by Michael Palmer

Grand Avenue by Joy Fielding

Black Cross by Greg Iles

Sailing to Capri by Elizabeth Adler

Highland Fling by Katie Fforde

The Apprentice by Tess Gerritsen

The Genesis Code by John Case

Improbable by Adam Fawer

The Romanov Prophecy by Dave Berry

I also received a few from paperbackswap - but those were mainly sewing/quilting ones.