The 2022 European Reading Challenge is up and running - sign up now!

 

THE 2022 EUROPEAN READING CHALLENGE IS HERE!

It's time to sign up for the 2022 European Reading Challenge! Many of you have already signed up, but there is still time for those of you looking for a fun 2022 reading challenge. 

I put up the main challenge page last month but just realized I never posted about it. Sign up for the 2022 ERC challenge on the main challenge page HERE or click the challenge button above. 

2022 is the 10th anniversary of the European Reading Challenge. Join us to make the Grand Tour of Europe in books. The idea is to read books by different European authors or set in different European countries. 

Read the books of your choice, at the level you choose. You can sign up for the challenge to read 1 to 5 books. Want more of a challenge? Go for the Jet Setter Prize! The person who reads and reviews the most books -- each from a different country -- wins a prize.

The most books you can read for the challenge is 50 because there are 50 commonly recognized sovereign states of Europe:

Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Vatican City.

2021 was the first year anyone managed to read books for all 50 countries. In prior years, no one came close. In 2021, at least three people made that impressive trek! Let's see who can make the journey in 2022.

CHANGE: One change in 2022 is that the challenge will run only until December 31, 2022. In years past, we always went an extra month and people could finish their books on January 31 of the following year. But that got too confusing! So starting with 2022 and the 10th anniversary, the deadline for reading all the challenge books is now December 31. Participants still have until January 31, 2023 to complete all their reviews and wrap up posts. I will announce the winner of the Jet Setter Prize in early February.

LET'S BE SOCIAL!

In 2022, I'm making another big push for readers to participate in the European Reading Challenge through social media, like Instagram, goodreads, Facebook, whatever works. We did this in 2021 for the first time and it was a lot of fun! 

Posts on IG, goodreads, Facebook, and other platforms generate URLs that work fine with Mr. Linky. If you need help finding the URL link, message me through the platform or leave a comment and I'll walk you through it.

If you participate on social media or share your blog posts on social media, please use the hashtag #europeanreadingchallenge. That makes it easier to find each other.

Please sign up on the main challenge page HERE, or click the button above. Please also encourage other people to sign up, through their blogs or social media. Even if they don't blog or socialize, they can join in with comments on the challenge pages.

Bon voyage!

The Last Professional by Ed Davis -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

I hope your week is treating you well! Reading anything good this month?

What book are you sharing with us on Book Beginnings on Fridays? Please share the first sentence (or so). You can also share from a book you want to highlight, not a book you are reading. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I got a copy of a new book by Ed Davis from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. Because the world is very small, I'm friends with Ed on Facebook. That's why the book caught my eye when I saw it on LibraryThing. Ed went to high school in Sonoma County with my husband. I've never met him IRL, but we chit chat on Facebook sometimes. 

Here are the opening sentences from Ed's new book:

Until the rails arrived virtually at their doorsteps, most people lived a day's walk of where they were born. America was smaller.

-- from The Last Professional by Ed Davis, which launches January 25 from Artemesia Publishing and is available for pre-order.

That is a terrific opening for a story about the last days of jumping trains and and living on the road. It is a novel about a young man fleeing his past who teams up with an old loner. An old enemy pursues them, things turn deadly, and the story rolls out against an American landscape bounded by railroad tracks. It looks like an old-fashioned page turner. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please link to the Book Beginnings post on your blog or social media. If you post on or link to social media, please use the #bookbeginnigns hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Last Professional:

Men moved from the barracks to the tower, clean men with freshly scraped faces and slicked-back hair. From the yard came other men, smudged and tired, who climbed the barracks steps with lead feet, waved to friends with lead hands.

I think I'm going to enjoy this one. What do you think from these teasers?

THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

An American story! The Duke, near the end of his days, sees his way of life and the code he follows disappearing. Lynden is on the brink of a new beginning but cannot embrace it without confronting the traumas of his past. And a maniac is intent on destroying them both. Bonds are formed, secrets exposed, sacrifices made all against an American landscape of promise and peril. Three unforgettable characters, hurtling toward a climax where pasts and futures collide, and lives hang in the balance.

Murder at the Castle by M. B. Shaw -- BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

Murder at the Castle by M. B. Shaw (2020, Pegasus Books)

Iris Grey is an up-and-coming portrait painter whose last commission landed her in the news – as much for her sleuthing skills as her brush work – when the subject of her painting was murdered. Now Baron Jock MacKinnon, Laird of Pitfeldy Castle, has hired her to paint the portrait of his fiancée as a wedding present for the stunning American socialite. Jock doesn’t know that his betrothed, Kathy Miller, wants Iris to investigate a series of threatening notes warning her to call off the wedding.

Iris heads up to Pitfeldy, on the Scottish coast north of Aberdeen. She rents an AirBnB in the quaint fishing village and settles in to paint Jock’s soon-to-be third Lady Pitfeldy. But when two dead bodies turn up in the ruined bothy, Iris finds herself once more called to solve a murder mystery.

Murder at the Castle has everything required for a modern-day mystery paying homage to the Golden Age. Iris makes a likeable, suitably quirky and independent amateur sleuth. There is a complicated plot involving several potential suspects, a village full of buried secrets, a collection of feuding family members, a church fair in the village, parties at the castle, and a sympathetic local policeman. Add in a romantic subplot and a side trip to Italy to liven things up. There are a couple of loose threads that don’t so much need tying up as just tucked back into the fuzzy weave of this cozy mystery, but that is a quibble. 

All in all, Murder at the Castle is a completely satisfying puzzler.


NOTES

Get a taste for Murder at the Castle on Book Beginnings on Fridays where you can read the opening sentence and a Friday 56 teaser from page 56.

Murder at the Castle is the second book in M. B. Shaw’s Iris Grey series, following Murder at the Mill.

Humanity's Grace by Dede Montgomery -- BOOK REVIEW

 

BOOK REVIEW

Humanity's Grace by Dede Montgomery (2021, Bedazzled Ink)

Short stories, linked by a murder, set on the Oregon coast. I’m in!

Humanity's Grace, the new book by Dede Montgomery, author of Beyond the Ripples, is out now in ebook and paperback. Humanity's Grace revisits several of the characters in Beyond the Ripples but is a rich tale in its own right.

An untimely death in downtown Astoria, Oregon is the center point for this collection of 15 linked short stories that reads like a novel. Montgomery uses the murder to bring out the connections – present and past – between the inspecting officer, suspects, townspeople, and other characters. The stories are filled with “real people” moments, good and bad, scenes that remind us of our shared humanity by showing us how we should act or how not to act.

Each story explores the small details – an encounter at the beach, a long ago attempted crime, family arguments, past friends – out of which we weave our lives and our communities. Read together, these 15 stories pack a big emotional punch.

NOTES

Dede Montgomery described her earlier book, Beyond the Ripples, like this:

Ultimately, this book explores the connections formed between people. I believe that the universe works in a way that offers us multitudes of opportunities to connect and experience others, especially when we pay attention. Beyond the Ripples is also about the power of friendship, and the regrets and choices dotting family relationships. It is about secrets and how we all are given opportunities to forgive, learn, love, and move on. My own childhood act of writing a note, putting it in a bottle, and launching it into the Willamette River gave me the initial inspiration for the beginning of the novel. While an older man living downriver did answer my letter, this novel allowed me to imagine what else could come from something as simple as answering a letter from someone you don’t know.

Read my entire earlier interview with Dede Montgomery from when Beyond the Ripples came out here.  

Here is my short review of Beyond the Ripples:

Various characters come together after one finds a note in a bottle in the Columbia River. Beyond the Ripples is a novel of small town secrets, life choices, and family dramas that pulls you along from the first page. Fans of Maeve Binchey and Anne Tyler will really enjoy this Pacific Northwest version of their kind of engaging, heartfelt stories.

Read more about Humanity's Grace and Beyond the Ripples on Dede Montgomery's blog. You will also find updates on book events, including the upcoming launch party for Humanity's Grace.

Preyed Upon and Under the Orange Blossoms -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

  

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Happy new year! And welcome to the first Books Beginnings on Fridays of 2022! Thank you for joining us to share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week -- or just a book you want to highlight. 

Do you have any particular reading plan for 2022? Did you make any bookish reading resolutions? 

I signed up for a handful of reading challenges, which are more like reading guideposts than plans or resolutions. For those of you who join in the 2022 European Reading Challenge here on Rose City Reader -- THANK YOU! 2022 is the 10th anniversary of the ERC and the challenge that brings me the most joy to see all the participants that come back year after year to tour Europe in books. 

I'm also back for a second year with a TBR challenge that matches the calendar. The TBR 22 in '22 Challenge helps participants clear off their shelves by reading 22 books they already owned before New Year's Day. 

I hope you join me for one or both of these Rose City Reader challenges!

Now, back to our Book Beginnings!

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

I have a Books Beginnings two-fer to start the new year, because I got two similar books recently. Both are memoirs by abuse survivors seeking to help others by sharing their stories.

I couldn't believe I was back in his office. 

-- from Chapter One, "The Office Visit," in Preyed Upon: Breaking Free from Therapist Abuse by Amy Nordhues. 

I pop a warm orange slice into my mouth and methodically eat it to distract myself from the pain. 

-- from Chapter One, "Slices of Sunshine," in Under The Orange Blossoms: An Inspirational Story of Bravery and Strength by Cindy Benezra. 

Amy Nordhues was groomed and abused as a young adult by the church-based psychiatrist she went to for help with depression. Cindy Benezra was abused as a child by her father. Both struggled with the ongoing trauma of their abuse, especially the shame and self-blame they carried with them.

After much work brought them both their own healing and peace, Nordhues and Benezra wanted to write memoirs to share their stories. These memoirs are written primarily for abuse survivors. But they are comforting to anyone who has faced trauma and helpful for anyone supporting trauma survivors. 

I work with sex abuse survivors, so these memoirs ring true to me. I have cases going on right now working with survivors of people abused by their therapists when they were adults and many who were abused when they were children. It has been a hair on fire week for me with the Boy Scout bankruptcy hitting the skids because I have a lot of clients involved in that case. It is good news that the proposed plan did not get enough votes in favor from abuse survivors, for anyone following the story.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. Add the link to your BB post, not your main blog page or social media profile page. Please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings if you share on SM.

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Preyed Upon:

"Oh, I didn't realize psychiatrists did counseling."

"Oh, yes, getting to know my patients on a more intimate level drew me to this profession."

From Under the Orange Blossoms:

My racing heart draws my attention to my tight chest. I gently massage my chest to dissipate the tension.