Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Posts This Year

One thing I like about the new Blogger interface is the fact that it keeps track of the number of times individual posts are accessed.  As I understand it, if you are reading this post because you check my blog every day and are able to scroll through multiple posts, you are not "counted" as having read this post.  If, however, you are reading this because you followed the Top Ten Tuesday link, or whatever other direct link to this post, or if you found it via search engine and came right here, then you are counted as having read it.  In general, my most popular posts are meme posts.  I usually to In My Mailbox and It's Monday, What Are You Reading on Monday, and I try to do Top Ten Tuesday. On Sunday, I host Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival (link takes you to this week's post).

What about my content post?  What gets the most pageviews?

Wedding Dress
Sinner
My Story My Song
Until Lilly
Interview with Ellen Hrkach
The Priest and the Peaches
Come My Beloved
I'm Home--and the Importance of Ritual
The Sacraments in Scripture
Atheist to Catholic

So what does that tell me?  First of all, it tells me that the longer posts are up, the greater the chance that someone has read them.  Secondly, it tells me that it helps if someone besides me is promoting my posts.  Sinner is one of my popular posts this month--and it just so happens that the bookstore from which I got it is promoting it on their blog, with a teaser from and link to my blog.  Come My Beloved and Interview with Ellen Hrkach have been extensively promoted by Ellen.  Wedding Dress and The Priest and the Peaches were parts of blog tours.  Third, I think it tells me that Sunday Snippets attracts Catholic readers,who then read my posts about Catholic books.  Fourth, sometimes someone else's bad luck is your good luck.  After yesterday's bad news, I got a bunch of  folks reading My Story My Song about Robin Robert's mom.

See other folks' Top Tens at Many Little Blessings

Blog Tour: Waiting for Sunrise

Waiting for Sunrise: A Cedar Key Novel

About the Book:

Life sometimes gets the best of us. For some it's the daily pressures, for others it's the shadows of the past. For Patsy Milstrap, it's both. When she travels to beautiful Cedar Key on Florida's Gulf Coast in search of healing, she never dreams her past will be waiting for her there.

With a large helping of Southern charm, Waiting for Sunrise is a touching story of family, young love, and the need for forgiveness. Author Eva Marie Everson expertly draws out the bittersweet moments of life, weaving them into a tale that envelops the soul.

My Comments:

Waiting for Sunrise is another winner by Eva Marie Everson.  The book begins in 1964 as Patsy and her husband go to Cedar Key.  It then flashes back to 1946 and proceeds chronologically until it catches up with the opening scene, which is repeated later in the book.   Patsy lived with her mother and her abusive step-father until  one day her mother put her on a bus and sent her to live with the adoptive family of a brother she didn't know she had.  While the new family was good to her, she always wondered why her mother rejected her.  Years later, after she herself becomes a mother something happened that made her husband decide to search for her family.

My favorite character in the book was her husband, Gilbert.  He loved her, he waited for her,he courted her, he won her heart,and  he stuck by her when times got rough.  At one point Pasty wondered how God could have let her be put on that bus,and Gilbert reminds her that not only was she on that bus, he was too.  

While published by a Christian publisher and full of Christian themes like forgiveness and redemption, Waiting for Sunrise is  not a terribly religious book and I think most fans of women's fiction would like it.  

I'd like to thank the publisher for providing a complimentary review copy.  Grade:  B+.  

Kindle Giveaway:  

Eva Marie Everson is giving away a Kindle Fire to promote this book.  Enter here.

Other Books by Eva Marie Everson:

 My Review   
  My Review        My Review
 My Comments      My Review
 My Review

The Anniversary Waltz

About the Book:

At their sixtieth anniversary party, Adam Carlson asks his wife, Elizabeth, for their customary waltz. After the dance they gather the family and share their story—a story of love and courage overcoming adversity and thriving in the face of overwhelming odds.

It’s the summer of 1946, and Adam has just returned from the war to his home in Reunion, Montana. At a town festival he meets Elizabeth Baxter, a young woman going steady with his former high school rival and now influential banker, Nathan Roberts.

When Adam and Elizabeth share a waltz in a deserted pavilion one evening, their feelings begin to grow and they embark on a journey, and a dance, that will last a lifetime.

My Comments:

I used to love to listen to my grandparents tell stories of the olden days, and this is the story of the olden days for one couple.  Since the book starts with them dancing at their 60th anniversary, the ending was never really in doubt--it was the story of how they got there, not the story of where they were going.  The story is full of references to post-war life including young adults who had to grow up early between the Depression and the War.  

A major event in this story happens as part of the wedding revelry--the shivaree.  My grandfather said he and my grandmother were shivareed.  They went home together for the first time on their wedding night, and their friends showed up at the house to make lots of noise and celebrate.  In this book the shivaree involves friends kidnapping (in good fun) the bride.  

I enjoyed this sweet "how we met" story and give it a B.  

Monday Memes

This month, Mailbox Monday is hosted by Alternative Reads.  Bloggers list books that arrived in either snail mail or email.  I got two this week:

Taste of Home: Cooking School Cookbook: 400 + Simple to Spectacular Recipes

My Review

Cottage by the Sea: A Novel

It's Monday, What Are You Reading is hosted by Sheila over at Book Journey.  She asks what we are reading now, what we are reviewing and what we plan to read next.

This week I only published one review: Taste of Home Cooking School

I read two other  books:

The Anniversary Waltz: A novel

One Mountain Away (Goddesses Anonymous)

Up Next:

Glamorous Illusions: A Novel (Grand Tour Series)

The Inn at Rose Harbor: A Novel