Monday Memes

Mailbox Monday is hosted this month by Amused by Books and is where book bloggers gather to share what showed up in their mailboxes this week, whether those mailboxes received email or snail mail.

Snail Mail:  
 My seven year old likes this one, for a tour October 3-7.

Via NetGalley:
 I'm hoping for some new tricks to try with my Girl Scouts



Amazon Freebies:

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It's Monday, What Are You Reading is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.  She asks what we read or reviewed this week and what we plan to read next week.
Read this Week:
I actually decided to read some of those Amazon Freebies rather than just stockpiling them.
  These were romances, about what you'd expect looking at the covers.

 A sweet Christmas read.  Will be reviewed this month as part of Christmas in September.

 Books Read Earlier; Reviewed last week:

You'll note that the first couple of books below are Christmas books.  This week I started a link-up to which I'd like to invite all readers and book bloggers, Christmas in September.  Bloggers are invited to add links to your reviews of Christmas books, either from this year or years past (could be a good way to get more mileage out of old posts).  Readers are invited to read the linked reviews.  Prizes are available for both readers and bloggers.  Hopefully by the end of the month Christmas in September will have a long list of Christmas-themed books for all of us to try,

 My Review

 My Review

 My Review

 My Review

 My Review.

Christmas in September: My Review of Debbie Macomber's Christmas Cookbook

Debbie Macomber's Christmas Cookbook: Favorite Recipes and Holiday Traditions from My Home to Yours

About the Book:

We call her the "Official Storyteller of Christmas"—but Debbie Macomber is more than that. She's someone who loves the holiday and its traditions. Now she shares more than one hundred of her favorite recipes to help you enjoy this joyous season. You'll also find easy-to-follow instructions for crafts, decorations and gift wrapping—everything you need to create a beautiful holiday.

What makes this cookbook unique is Debbie's personal memories and observations. Join her as she reminisces about traditions past and present, and discover the craft ideas she herself uses. As she says, "The holidays are about being with others. They're about celebrating and sustaining our community of family and friends."

In this beautifully illustrated book, she shows you how to serve a memorable meal, whether it's a sit-down Christmas dinner for a crowd, entertaining friends at an open house or tea, or spending time with your children or grandchildren baking cookies and making gifts.

My Comments:

In case you haven't noticed, I've read a lot of NetGalleys lately.  NetGalleys come in two different formats.  Those I download to my Kindle are in black and white, and I get to keep them forever (but rarely do, I know I won't read them again so why bother?).  Those I download to my computer are in color (if the print version is) but they expire after a certain amount of time.  I'm happy with the arrangement, except for cookbooks.  For one thing, many cookbooks don't offer the Kindle version so if I want to keep recipes, I have to go through a work-around.  Even for those that do, the effect just isn't as nice as a book.  However, I have decided that if I review cookbooks I can download to my Kindle, I will make at least one recipe, photograph it (and my assistant cook) and give the book an "extra" post.  Those cookbook I only get to review for a short while will get a short "here is what I saw" type of review.

Debbie Macomber's Christmas Cookbook: Favorite Recipes and Holiday Traditions from My Home to Yours is a beautiful cookbook filled with delicious-sounding recipes as well as craft ideas.  Interspersed are holiday anecdotes from Macomber's family.  While there are not photos of every recipe, there are beautiful color photos of a lot of them.  I miss a lot of the effect with my Kindle, yet I can't bring the computer into the kitchen to use when cooking (well I guess I could bring the laptop, but my cookbooks always end up with stuff on them and computers are expensive).  It is books like this that make me long for "the good old days" of real review copies.  It includes breakfast foods, appetizers, Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner, Christmas desserts, baking with Grandma, family dinners and Christmas gifts.  

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley (even though I would have rather had a real review copy).  Grade:  B+   Stay tuned for another post with a recipe for German Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies.

See this review and others on my Christmas in September link-up.  Come over and link up your reviews of Christmas-themed books.

Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival

I'd like to welcome everyone to Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival.  We are a group of Catholic bloggers who gather weekly to share our best posts with each other.  To particpate, go to your blog and create an entry titled Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival.  In it, highlight one or more of your posts from the past week that you believe would be of interest to Catholic bloggers---whether they are posts reflecting on spiritual matters or posts about antics of Catholic kids, or anything in between.  Come back here and enter the URL of that post below.  Finally, go visit other participants, and leave comments!  If you want a weekly reminder to post, join our yahoogroup.

The main thing I want to highlight this week is my "Christmas in September" feature.  It is a link-up, kind of like Sunday Snippets, meaning there is a linky at the end of the page for other bloggers to use to link to their posts.  The posts I'm asking you to link are reviews of Christmas or Advent books.  If you have reviews of Christmas or Advent  books that you've published in past years, I invite you to link them, as well as reviews of any new books.  I'll be publishing quite a few reviews of Christmas books this month and I thought this would be a good way to interact with other bloggers.  Since book bloggers and readers of book blogs love free books, I have prizes including Joy to the World by our own Kate Basi.  If you are a blogger, you earn chances to win the prizes by linking reviews (one chance per link); if you are a reader, you can enter by leaving a comment per week about a book you found via the feature.

I also reviewed a very good book about teen pregnancy, Pregnant Pause.

Christmas in September: A Simple Amish Christmas

A Simple Amish Christmas

About the Book:

Annie Weaver always planned to return home, but the 20-year old RN has lived in Philadelphia for three years now. As her time of rumschpringe is about to come to an abrupt end, bringing for Annie an overwhelming sense of loneliness. She returns home and finds herself face-to-face with a budding romance with an Amish farmer and Annie has several important choices to make.

My Comments:

Annie is called home to nurse her injured father, and leaves her big-city life without a backward glance.  When she arrives home she sees a local Amish herb healer--sort of a doctor who hasn't been to medical school--and starts to help him with his work, and while he initially rubs her the wrong way....

I liked Annie and liked how she tried to integrate the knowledge she gained in the English world with her Amish ways.  However, I just question how realistic the whole book was.  I have no idea how local authorities treat the Amish, but anyone in our society doing what that healer was doing would be accused of practicing medicine without a license.  

The book is set during the Christmas season and Vanneta Chapman contrasts the Amish  Christmas traditions with ours.  It was a sweet, enjoyable if somewhat unrealistic story.  Grade:  B-

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley.  I was under no obligation to provide a positive review.

This book review is part of Christmas in September.  Please stop by and link-up your Christmas-themed book reviews, old and new.  There are prizes for bloggers and readers.