Last day to comment to win an ARC paperback or ebook of “My Wish List: A Novel” Winner chosen Tuesday, April 1 at noon, CST.
Good luck!
Last day to comment to win an ARC paperback or ebook of “My Wish List: A Novel” Winner chosen Tuesday, April 1 at noon, CST.
Good luck!
Don’t forget to sign up to WIN! Read below and fill out the form! Enjoy!
A winner will be selected on Tuesday, April 1 (no foolin’!) and will be notified by email. Must be from USA or Canada to win. Please state your preference of ebook or paperback, and provide your phone number, if you are from Canada.
Questions can be answered here or there in the comments! Thanks for playing!
Don’t you just love a free book???
Happy reading!
Thanks to the publisher of this little book, I have either an ebook or an ARC paperback to GIVEAWAY to one randomly selected person! All you have to do is read my review posted HERE and comment on that post through the comment form. Please tell me at least ONE THING that would be on YOUR wishlist, if you were to win, say, $25,000,000.
A winner will be selected on Tuesday, April 1 (no foolin’!) and will be notified by email. Must be from USA or Canada to win. Please state your preference of ebook or paperback, and provide your phone number, if you are from Canada.
Questions can be answered here or there in the comments! Thanks for playing!
Don’t you just love a free book???
Happy reading!
On March 12 we went for a big mid-week night out in Minneapolis!
First we ate at The Butcher and the Boar. Oh my.
We were food drunk!
And the play was as fantastic as I remembered!
The simplicity makes it magical.
The story is beautiful.
The acting was superb.
The comedy was hilarious.
And there were tears.
It was beautiful.
Afterwards it was fun to Tweet with Troy – and interact with @StarcatcherBway as well! So good.
Again… See it if you can – and if you can’t, watch this extended preview from the Broadway performance!
Extended Preview of Peter and the Starcatcher – Broadway –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWg7J8n6RmI
In the midst of coursework, I took the time to read this book for a blog tour. I loved the premise (who doesn’t dream of winning the lottery?) and it is a mere 176 pages, so it was a quick read. I read it with a highlighter in my hand (a little bit of the student coming through?) because some of the sentences and passages called out to be reread and read aloud. Wow. I loved the language.
Jocelyne is a 47 year old woman who married a man named Jocelyn (“One chance in millions. And it happened to me.”) Jo and Jo have two children, they both work hard and have what they need but little more. They were in that place in their marriage where they were happy, content. Their children were raised, they were comfortable being together, and their dreams were small. He worked for Haagen Daz and she owned her own fabric store (haberdashery) and started a blog. He dreamed of a big screen TV and a fancy car. She dreams of being happy and having her father with a failing memory well-cared for.
She wins a large sum of money (18,000,000 Euros) and doesn’t tell anyone. She hides the money in a shoe and then creates lists – lists of things she needs, lists of things she want – and she worries about how the money will change her life. And change her life, it does.
“Being rich means seeing all that’s ugly and having the arrogance to think you can change things. All you have to do is pay for it.”
I really enjoyed this book. I loved the care that the translator took with the language – I loved the writing, period! The chapters were short, but for example, one chapter was infused with “I dreamed…” sentences. Another is full of “I am happy with Jo” sentences. I love that. I love that the things on our “need” lists are called our “daily little dreams” that keep us going. There was so much of the language of the book that really was beautiful. It was spare but meaningful. But the book does have a surprising twist which packs a powerful punch, so it is not without plot.
There is much I could highlight about this book in this blog, as is shown by the highlights in my book! Whoever borrows the book from me will have to contend with the orange highlights throughout. But as the book uses few words to make its point, so will I.
This book would lend itself to great discussion and would be a great book club book. Who doesn’t like to dream of winning the lottery? Who also doesn’t want to dream about how money would change their life? And it sounds like it’s going to be made into a movie! French or American, I’ll see it!
Good stuff. And this good stuff can be yours! I’m hosting a GIVEAWAY! Tomorrow I’ll give the details on how you could win an ebook or Advanced Readers Copy paperback of this book of your very own (you won’t have to see my highlights!). Stay tuned!
Thanks Emma for the opportunity to participate in this blog tour! More info can be found by clicking here:
A cathartic, charmingly tender, assuredly irresistible novel, MY WISH LIST (Penguin; ISBN: 9780143124658; On-sale: March 25, 2014: $15.00) imagines one answer to the question: If you won the lottery, would you trade your life for the life of your dreams? With sales of more than half a million copies in France alone, rights sold in twenty-five countries, and a major motion picture in development, this slim yet spirited tale has sewn up the interest of the literary world.
Jocelyne Guerbette is a forty-seven year old who runs a modest fabric shop in a nondescript provincial French town. Her husband—instead of dreaming of her—wants nothing more in life than a flat-screen TV and the complete James Bond DVD box set. And to Jocelyne’s two grown-up children, who live far from home, she’s become nothing but an obligatory phone call. Perpetually wondering what has happened to all the dreams she had when she was younger, Jocelyne finally comes to terms with the series of ordinary defeats and small lies that seem to make up her life.
But then Jocelyne wins the lottery: $25,500,000! And suddenly she finds the world at her fingertips. But before cashing the check, before telling a soul, she starts making a list of all the things she could do with the money. While evaluating the small pleasures in life—her friendship with the twins who manage the hairdresser next door, her holidays away, her sewing blog that’s gaining popularity—she begins to think that the everyday ordinary may not be so bad. Does she really want her life to change?
MY WISH LIST is an essential reminder of the often-overlooked joys of everyday life and a celebration of the daily rituals, serendipities, and small acts of love that make life quietly wonderful [provided by the publisher]
***
“A runaway bestseller that looks set to follow the success of The Elegance of the Hedgehog.” — Elle (France)
“Delacourt has hit the jackpot… [He has a] knack for finding exactly the right words and for evoking feeling” — Le Nouvel Observateur
“Delacourt has a keen eye for everyday life and for the extraordinary challenges that ordinary people face” — Le Parisien
***
Grégoire Delacourt was born in Valenciennes, France, in 1960. His first novel, L’Écrivain de la Famille, was published in 2011 and won five literary prizes. MY WISH LIST has been a runaway number-one bestseller in France; publication rights have been sold in more than twenty-five countries. Delacourt lives in Paris, where he runs an advertising agency with his wife.
I feel so lucky that on March 12 I get to see Peter and the Starcatcher for the second time!
I first saw it in June 2012 when it was on Broadway in NYC. It is not a musical, but a play filled with music, and it is magical and fantastic and simple. Prior to seeing the show I had read two of the books in the series by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson – “Peter and the Starcatchers” and “Peter and the Shadow Thieves.” These books detail Peter Pan before he became Peter Pan, when he was simply, “BOY.” This is an adaptation of these books and is brought to stage by Rick Elice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xxYkdB-XEc
Above is a clip from the original Broadway cast production. I also feel so lucky that I was a stalker and had my photo taken with a few members of the cast!
What’s doubly exciting about seeing it a second time, is that there’s a Q&A afterwards with the cast!
The Orpheum in Minneapolis is a beautiful place to see a show, so I have no doubt that I’ll have another magical, fantastic experience with the touring version of “Peter and the Starcatcher” in 2014!
I’m sure I’ll blog later this week to tell you about it!
Evidently WordPress dropped some plugins, which makes me pretty sad. It used to be so easy to find related articles and links to Wiki or IMDB for the things I was writing about, but now it isn’t automatic. 😦 I guess they want me to “Go Premium,” but I won’t be doing that anytime soon, as I already “bought” my domain name. I’ll either work a little harder for more links on my blog or I won’t. 🙂
Not much else going on here… a great grown-up slumber party last night means I’m exhausted tonight. I work overnights Monday and Tuesday, so I’d better try to bank some sleep. I know that Monday I’ll be enjoying my current book – and getting ready for my next blog tour book! Two weeks!
Happy Monday, everyone!
It gets a little old to start every blog post off with “Where did the last month go?” but here I am, once again, thinking the same thing! So I’ll recap my month in the only way I know how – by listing the highlights and the things that have made me happy since I last blogged! With pictures!
There were some games:
There were epic weekends:
There was an early Valentine’s Date:
There were books and discussions:
There were movies and award shows:
I’m sure that’s an overload. I either need to blog more often or remember that people probably only read one paragraph before moving on! If you made it to the end, I’d love to hear from you. What made you happy in February? It was a brutally cold month with horrible weather where I live, so you gotta look for the good to stay sane!