Teaser Tuesday Twofer: Generation Share and Listening at Lookout Creek

I have two teasers today because I have so many new books stacked up on my desk. Just like I've double dipped for Book Beginnings posts lately, here are two teasers:

"The Share Shed is trying to cut down on stuff that people buy by sharing and borrowing instead. I want people to think, 'Could I borrow that instead of buying it?'"

Generation Share: The Change Makers Building the Sharing Economy by Benita Matofska and Sophie Sheinwald, a new release from Policy Press. This new book features interviews and photos highlighting 200 case studies of the new worldwide sharing movement.

I admit I have mixed feelings about the quote above. I have warm fuzzy feelings about a sharing tool shed. Sharing sheds are popular in Portland, where I live. On the other hand, what if you owned the neighborhood hardware store or you were the tool manufacturer? Tony, who runs the Beaumont Hardware Store in my neighborhood, is a nice guy, trying to make a living. He'd like people to buy a  hammer.

I like a book that gets me thinking.

The bottom line is this: Different forests have different spirits about them. The spirit of the woods is a  spirit of a particular place located in a specific region's biota and culture.

-- Listening at Lookout Creek: Nature in Spiritual Practice by Gretel Van Wieren, a new memoir from OSU Press. Van Wieren went to the Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon’s western Cascade Mountains to reconnect with the natural world. It is a beautiful book.

And now I have to go look up "biota."

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday: Mysteries and Memoirs

Three new books came my way last week:



Beyond a Reasonable Stout: A Sloan Krause Mystery by Ellie Alexander. This is the third mystery in Alexander's cozy Sloan Krause series set in Leavenworth, Washington, a charming Bavarian-like town in the northern Cascade mountains.

Brewer and amateur sleuth Sloan Kraus is back to run Nitro, her craft brewery, and solve the murder of a local politician. She gets some help from her business partner and love interest Garret Strong.



A Cup of Holiday Fear: A Bakeshop Mystery by Ellie Alexander. Yes, Alexander had two book come out almost in the same week! She's on a roll. This one is the latest, the tenth, in her popular Bakeshop Mystery series set in Ashland, Oregon.

There is nothing cozier than a culinary cozy, set at Christmastime, with a murder at a Dickens Feast at a historic inn in a Shakespeare-themed village. Treat yourself!



The Mountains of Paris: How Awe and Wonder Rewrote My Life by David Oates. This new memoir is out now from OSU Press and looks wonderful and uplifting. The back cover says:

In luminous prose, Oates invites readers to share a sense of awe -- whether awakened by a Vermeer painting or a wilderness sojourn, by the night sky, a loved one, or echoing strains of music -- lifting the curtain on a cosmos filled with a terrifying yet beautiful rightness.

What books came into your house last week?

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Book Beginning Twofer: Frank's Revenge by Don DuPay & Celibate by Maria Giura

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

I have two again this week because my stack of new books is still teetering!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Anyone watching her would say she was showing a lot of cleavage.

-- Frank's Revenge: Albina After Dark by Don DuPay, author of Behind the Badge: A Portland Police Memoir. Frank's Revenge is a new mystery novel, a noir thriller set here in Portland. The author, Don DuPay, is a former homicide detective. I like the opening sentence!

DuPay's book caught my attention because it has a blurb on the front cover by my favorite former Oregonian newspaper columnist, Phil Stanford, who wrote a book I loved, Portland Confidential: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Rose City and, more recently, Rose City Vice: Portland in the 70's - Dirty Cops and Dirty Robbers.

I first noticed Father Infanzi in the way that matters during his second year at Saint Stephen's.

-- Celibate by Maria Giura. This new memoir is by a woman who fell in love with a Catholic priest and struggled with their relationship for 10 years before finding her true calling. From Apprentice House Press, a student-managed book publisher at Loyola University Maryland.

I just watched the second season of Fleabag, so I am definitely intrigued.

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up. Please find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING





TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

Frank's Revenge:

Cunningham stood behind his desk, seething, his chest rising and falling with each angry inhalation of breath. He glanced at Lt, Hatch who said nothing, just sat and smiled, amused at the proceedings.

Celibate:

"We used to have a lot of Sisters in this house, every bedroom occupied, so we really needed the space. Now we're two Sisters and two novices."

Teaser Tuesday: Shrug by Lisa Braver Moss

It was gloomy at the store, but somehow business went on; people kept coming in for cigarettes or for an issue of Ramparts or Jaques Loussier doing jazz versions of Bach pieces. When I arrived, my father was pacing, clearly annoyed by one of the regulars, known in our family as "the mooch."

-- Shrug, by Lisa Braver Moss.

Shrug is loosely based on the author's own tumultuous childhood in Berkeley in the 1960s, in a violent household. Teen-aged Martha has to navigate the complexities of family abuse with a violent father who owns a record store and a mother who is off the rails. Instead of going downhill herself, all Martha wants to do is finish high school go to college. But the stress in her life manifests itself in a tic she can't control, a shrug of her shoulder.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:

Martha perseveres with the help of her best friend, who offers laughter, advice about boys, and hospitality. But when Willa and Jules divorce and Jules loses his store and livelihood, Willa goes entirely off the rails. A heartless boarding school placement, eviction from the family home, and an unlikely custody case wind up putting Martha and Drew in Jules's care. Can Martha stand up to her father to do the one thing she knows she must—go to college?

With its running "soundtrack" of classical recordings and rock music and its vivid scenes of Berkeley at its most turbulent, Shrug is the absorbing, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting story of one young woman’s journey toward independence.

Lisa Braver Moss is a writer who was born in Berkeley and still lives in the Bay Area. She usually writes nonfiction, specializing in family issues, health, Judaism and humor. Her essays have appeared in the Huffington Post, Parents, Tikkun, Lilith, and other publications. Shrug is her second novel; The Measure of His Grief was her debut novel.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Miscellany: Paperless Post Test Drive

I love reading and blogging about books. My other favorite hobby is stationery. I love sending paper invitations for parties. I try to use (use up, I should say) my collection of boxed cards and notes as invitations when I can. For instance, I recently used a set of vintage-looking postcards for a pot luck invitation and some Italian note cards for my mom’s birthday brunch.

But there are only so many minutes in the day! Sometimes sending an electronic invitation is the way to go. So I was more than willing to take Paperless Post up on its offer to make a test run, including their hippest designs from Happy Menocal, John Derian, Jonathan Adler, and my favorite Rifle Paper Co., in exchange for a review here on Rose City Reader.

My law firm hosts an annual "clothes swap" event every fall, so I used my coins to make a the most elaborate clothes-themed invitation I could come up with.

Here’s what it looked like:

I wanted fun, because this is a casual event, that also had fall colors because it is in October. I love the invitation card itself, because the colors are fresh and autumnal, and the images are perfect for a clothes swap. The original design was for a birthday party, but it was easy to customize the words. You can also change the font itself, the size, or the spacing. And for no additional coins, you can add "letterpress" effect, which I did because I think it makes it look more like paper.

I chose a Rifle Paper Co. background to mix in flowers with the same green and persimmon colors with the geometric prints in the clothes:

There were a lot of envelope liners to chose from, but I went with the suggested liner with green stripes:

And, finally, I chose a feminine stamp because I liked it:

The design I picked cost "2 coins" and each add on -- fancy Rifle Paper Co. background, adding an envelope, coordinating envelope liner, fancy stamp -- cost an additional coin, for a total of "6 coins" per invitation. Coins vary in cost depending on how many you buy, from 25 cents per coin to 10 cents per coin.

We sent the invitation to 150 people, so needed 900 coins. The most cost efficient way to do this would be to buy the package of 1,000 coins for $100. So sending these fancy invitations to 150 people would cost $100, which is much less than paper invitations and, of course, we paid nothing for stamps!

I'm not ready to toss my stationery collection in the recycling bin. But I'll definitely use Paperless Post for more invitations, especially for professional events or when the alternative is that I send no invitation at all.