Samantha’s Favorite Reads of 2011!
As another year comes to an end, a fun thing we book bloggers like to do is look back and crown our favorites of all favorites when it comes to books we read. Throughout 2011, I read and reviewed 143 books, a twenty-two book increase compared to 2010. Not too shabby considering I also published my own novel and started CLP Blog Tours! I can’t wait to see what 2012 has in store for me, but for now, let’s reflect on my Favorites of 2011!
The time has come. Chick Lit Plus is officially looking to add an associate reviewer to the roster. I (Samantha) just cannot keep up with…
I was really hoping all the reports on this one was wrong, but turns out another Hollywood couple is heading for splits-ville. People.com has reported…
No one writes a book hoping everyone will hate it. At least, I’m 99% positive on that. But what does a bad review do to an author’s spirits? When Destined to Fail went on sale in October, I was truly petrified. I remember when the first review popped up on Amazon. Four stars. Good review. Reader connected with the book. I cried. Of course I cried. Years of hard work and determination and endless typing and editing and frustrations over characters and scenes and nightmares of red pens had all culminated to that moment. My book was being read and getting reviews.
The next five reviews on Amazon were all four stars. Then reviews started going up on GoodReads. Four stars. A five star! (Yes, I nearly fell over when I saw my first five star rating.) Book bloggers were posting their reviews, and the feedback was overwhelmingly good. While I was ecstatic about this, I knew a bad review was out there lurking. It had to be. I never expected everyone to love or even like my book. It just wouldn’t be possible.
Then came the two star. A short little blurb on Amazon that said there were too many heavy topics and my main character was “contradictory.” Not much more was said – only six lines, so I really didn’t know what to take away from the review. It wasn’t really constructive feedback in my opinion, because it was so short and didn’t explain why they thought this. But hey, that’s okay. And you know what? It really was okay. I honestly expected myself to have a meltdown when the first “bad” review came in. I thought I would cry and yell and tell myself I would never write again (okay, maybe not that last one, but you see what I mean). But…I didn’t. I was strangely calm. So strangely calm I wondered if perhaps I was getting sick. Or if I didn’t read the review properly. Or something – anything!
I think I had prepared myself enough that when a negative review was posted, I knew it was coming. It’s a part of life for people to disagree with others and not like everything, even if others do. And another thing – I realize that my book has some pretty controversial subjects in there. It’s not light, it’s not fluff. Serious issues are spoken about, serious decisions are made by the characters. If everyone had a positive reaction to the book, I would think something was seriously weird.
I won’t mind if people give their feedback saying it wasn’t their cup of tea, or they didn’t expect something with a pink cover to be so serious. I will also be happy if people have a strong reaction to the book, whether good or bad. Even if it is bad, it means my story said something to them. It touched them in some way. I have read books before that I didn’t particularly enjoy, but some of those same books have characters that haunt me. That I can’t help but tell everyone about. Because I want others to read it and let me know what they think. If some readers have this reaction, great. Maybe it will get more people to read Destined to Fail and they will enjoy it. Who knows?
I will never be able to write a book that is aimed just at pleasing people. Who can? I want to write what I want to write, and I will do just that. Some books might be deeper women’s fiction. Some might be lighter chick lit. I have on my writer’s bucket list (post about this to come soon) to write a mystery and a book with a magical element.
My journey as an author has only just begun. Feedback, reviews, and ratings will always be there. Whether positive, negative, or just in between, I will embrace the comments and enjoy knowing that my book is being read. Because no one writes a book without wanting readers.
In My Mailbox: Week of December 25
Title: She Tells All
Author: Judah Lee Davis
Received: Via CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Her magic stilettos ensure that she will get lucky tonight, while her big mouth ensures she will stay in trouble. This sleepy little southern town just isn’t big enough for the adventures of mischievous Madison Miller. But when tragedy strikes, she is forced to learn important lessons about life, love and why she should NEVER sleep with strangers.
Title: The Baby Trap
Author: Sibel Hodge
Received: From Sibel Hodge
Synopsis: Based on her own experiences with infertility and two attempts at IVF, Sibel Hodge’s latest novel The Baby Trap will have you laughing and crying at the ups and downs of modern baby-making…
When Gina turns thirty-three her body clock unexpectedly begins clanging in her ear with annoying persistence. The only problem is, having a baby isn’t as easy as she thought. Whether she’s feng shui-ing the house to death with fertility symbols, throwing out her husband’s tight boxers in favour of baggies, swapping wine and chocolate for green tea and yams, popping fertility drugs like M&M’s, or having sex so precision-timed it makes international warfare manoeuvres look unorganized, her life is turned upside down. And when nothing seems to be working, her quest for the B-word turns into an obsession.
Can Gina stay sane, get pregnant, and keep her marriage together? Or will her baby trail become a baby trap?
Title: The Look of Love
Author: Judy Astley
Received: Unsolicited
Synopsis: Bella has given up on men. Happily divorced, her latest boyfriend just omitted to tell her about his current wife, so she’s back on her own again. Then her ex-husband turns up, wanting to sell the family home in which she and their two teenage children are well settled. But all their lives are changed when a television company rents the house for a reality TV fashion makeover programme.
Against her better judgment Bella finds herself taking part in the programme, and while she learns a little bit too much about what really goes on behind the scenes, she also discovers that love can appear in the most unexpected places….
When did you know writing was for you? I guess I’ve always been a writer…keeping journals and writing little stories. But one night an idea…
I am doing something new to this year and participating in the 2011 Thankful for the Holidays Blog Hop! This is being hosted by Romancing…
Where did the inspiration for Chosen come from?
CHOSEN was influenced and shaped by a trail of experiences and opportunities. It wasn’t as though I chose the adventures so I could write about them, but the stories shaped my life, and subsequently, a novel.
In 1995 I was a senior at Cornell University when I connected with a professor who wanted an aide worker to go into a Romanian orphanage and hospital where her own adoption was stalled. I volunteered, flying to Bucharest alone, not knowing the language or the social complexities that had created a country where most orphans were not without parents, just abandoned to a state-run foster care. I only knew I loved babies and travel, adventure. It was overwhelming, (I was given fifty infants my first day) and heartbreaking, nearly impossible for me to leave Bucharest to finish my degree at last I did. (You can read more about Romania here: http://www.chandrahoffman.com/blog/2010/7/23/digging-up-the-past-part-1-of-2.html)
After college, I couldn’t stop thinking about adoption, about the circumstances surrounding new life that will shape it forever. At the end of several years abroad, I applied for a position at an international adoption agency and ended up as the director of their US program, the sole caseworker juggling birthmothers and waiting families. I fell in love with both the city of Portland and the heady allure of a job so full of promise.
Like Chloe Pinter, I went into it with the intention of creating happy endings. Similar to when I stepped off the plane in Romania, I quickly scrambled to learn a new language and subculture; the business side of adoption. But as the months passed, I got too attached. I cried and raged at some adoptions that fell apart, and just as painfully for some that went through. I left not because I no longer believed in adoption, but because the potential for joy and heartache walking the razor’s edge was no longer something I was able to agent — my skin had become too thin.
Faced with our own pregnancy and an unexpected diagnosis at our first son’s birth, I pondered some of the deeper issues that formed the backbone of this novel. How does parenthood change you? How will the challenges you face shape you as a couple? What happens when your expectations of parenthood are so far from the reality? What makes a good parent? A good person? What happens when you get what you thought you wanted?
All of these courageous people whose lives had touched mine so intimately rattled around with me as I adjusted to that first year of new parenthood. Driving home from a pre-dawn airport run, exhausted from getting up to hang bottles for my newborn’s feeding tube, I stopped to get gas at a filling station not far from the very place where a child was abducted in my hometown twenty years earlier. Knowing this, I still fantasized about not lugging the car seat and its precious cargo out with me just to run in for a bottle of water… But what if I didn’t?
The idea for this novel was born out of that single scene. A mother so exhausted her judgment lapses; a grief-stricken, empty-armed father who takes advantage of this. The story is fiction—characters and settings and scenarios are as though I took a handful of experiences, marinated them in a childhood paranoia of abduction, seasoned them with the salt of my vivid imagination, put the whole thing in a bag and shook it up—but the themes are real, from my own life and from those I have been privileged to witness.
Are you currently working on another novel?
Last year on book tour in Santa Monica I was sleeping with the windows open to hear the ocean, and I dreamed the plot of my next novel–a love story set in the steamy Caribbean summer where the tragedies are not what they seem to be, and a hint of mystery. I’m so excited to share it with readers soon!
What are some books that you have read recently and really enjoyed?
When I’m actively writing a novel, I tend to read more nonfiction and memoir so that I can stay consistent in my own narrative voice. As a gardener, I’ve been on a locavore food movement kick. Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle was an inspiration, and Kristin Kimball’s The Dirty Life a fascinating account of following your heart. I love the idea of being more connected to what we eat and creating a more sustainable lifestyle. I’ve been campaigning hard for chickens and recently had a little foray into goats… You can read about that here: http://www.chandrahoffman.com/essays/in-over-my-caprine-head.html
I love gardening beside my kids and creating an appreciation for food and the miracle of life, the return of spring after our icy winters. I know there is more of this in my future.
How did you become first involved in working with orphanages?
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What are some hobbies outside of writing?
There’s a joke that my family of origin bred for brains, so it’s a wonder that sports take up so much of my hobby time, since I’m not a natural athlete. I’ve been running for years, see link: http://www.chandrahoffman.com/essays/running-for-my-life.html
which keeps me sane, and I play field hockey from March to November in a Philly sports league. After moving from the Caribbean where we mostly enjoyed water sports, my husband suggested we had better take up ice hockey in the Pennsylvania winter or we’d go nuts cooped up indoors with three little kids. I didn’t know how to skate but it turned out to be brilliant! We all play–even my littlest is putting on the pads–and I love that our town has an outdoor skating pavilion, so that I’m getting exercise and my critical time outdoors even in the long gray winter months. Ten years ago I never would have thought we’d be a hockey family, with my husband building a backyard rink and the Flyers obsession and our winter weekends having as many as twelve games, but it does keep us occupied, active and sane.
How important do you think social media is for authors?
Where would be your dream vacation?
I’ve heard that you’re either a mountain person or a beach person. I’ve lived in the Caribbean and that breathtaking point where the Atlantic and Mediterranean meet in Tarifa, Spain, and I’ve lived in the mountains of Breckenridge, Colorado. While I can appreciate the beauty of mountains and enjoy hiking and snowboarding, I know for sure I’m an ocean girl. Relaxing and swimming and playing on the beach with my family and a pile of books and an umbrella drink is where it’s at for me.
I have been trying out Garnier products for awhile and have been having good luck, so when I needed a new cleanser, I picked up Garnier Nutritioniste Moisture Rescue Fresh Cleansing Foam. I actually have the moisturizer as well and really like it, so I figured why not the cleanser? I have to say, I have had really good luck with it. It definitely brings back moisture to my face––sometimes a little too much. I balance out this cleanser with another cleanser––Biore’s Ice Cleanser, and I have found the mix to be perfect for me. When my face is a little dry, I use Garnier, and when I look a little oily, I use the Biore. I definitely have combination skin, and with the seasons in Iowa it always varies. I think I have really found what works for me here! I would recommend the Garnier cleanser, unless you have really oily skin to begin with. If you, I would try Biore’s Ice Cleanser!
[Rating: 4]
