Cat Thursday: Authors and Cats (111) Kaye Gibbons

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come acros s, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

The second Cat Thursday of each month is Authors and Cats Thursday. Each time I will feature an author (with a birthday during the month), pictured with their/a cat(s), or guest posts by cat loving authors who also (sometimes) write about cats.

Kaye Gibbons was born in 1960 (May 5) in Nash County, North Carolina, on Bend of the River Road. She attended North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying American and English literature. At twenty-six years old, she wrote her first novel, Ellen Foster. Praised as an extraordinary debut, Eudora Welty said that "the honesty of thought and eye and feeling and word" mark the work of this talented writer, and Walker Percy said, "Ellen Foster is a Southern Holden Caulfield, tougher perhaps, as funny…a breathtaking first novel." (Goodreads)

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Cat Thursday - Red Flags

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Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon - Spring 2022

I'm a bit late to the party. What else is new? Hoping to get to three books today to finish out April with a bang. Oh, that could be possibly four if I finish my audiobook as well.

What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Mt Pleasant, Michigan

Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?
Hoping to get to Ten by Gretchen McNeil

Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Deep fried Oreos (but not really deep fried) in the air fryer

Tell us a little something about yourself!

I'm a witch, a cat lover, champion procrastinator, a writer, and my home library numbers in the thousands (I'm talking around 5,000 or so).

If you participated in the last readathon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first readathon, what are you most looking forward to?

I always say read more, but I never seem to accomplish that. Maybe this will be the one!

What I'm reading/plan to read:

All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage

Mastering Witchcraft by Paul Huson

Ten by Gretchen McNeil

Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham (audio)

 

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Cat Thursday - Technology Savvy Cats

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Cat Thursday - Cat Conservationists

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In honor of Earth Day tomorrow...

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Cat Thursday: Authors and Cats (110) Nnedi Okorafor

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come acros s, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

The second Cat Thursday of each month is Authors and Cats Thursday. Each time I will feature an author (with a birthday during the month), pictured with their/a cat(s), or guest posts by cat loving authors who also (sometimes) write about cats.

Nnedi Okorafor is a Nigerian-American author of African-based science fiction and fantasy (Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism). Okorafor has won a Hugo, a Nebula, a World Fantasy Award, and a Locus Award, and her many fans include Neil Gaiman, Rick Riordan, John Green, and Ursula Le Guin. She is writing a series for Marvel about Shuri, Black Panther’s sister, and has a number of book-based projects in development for film and TV – including HBO’s adaptation of her novel Who Fears Death, with George R. R. Martin signed on as executive producer. Okorafor is also co-writing the screenplay of an adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed with filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu for Amazon Prime Video, with Viola Davis producing. Her novel Akata Warrior (of the Akata Series) is the winner of the Lodestar and Locus Award for Best Young Adult Novel. (Bio from Goodreads)

Her website: https://nnedi.com/

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Evie Hawtrey's And By Fire - Review

I did not know about Christopher Wren and the history of St. Paul's Cathedral, and even though I am a history buff, and I read a lot of historical fiction, I did not know very much about London's Great Fire. So I found it exciting and interesting to have that event written into the historical part of this mystery. I found  the events of the fire to be visually descriptive, giving me an idea of the devastation in my mind's eye.

While I very much enjoyed the historical parts, the present day mystery is the star of the show in my opinion. Nigella Parker is a smart independent woman with a no nonsense attitude. I like her. I wasn't keen on her relationship with James. I'm just really not that into sexy hookups, but that being said, it didn't overpower the story. I enjoyed the chemistry and banter between Parker and O'Leary, and secretly kept rooting for them to get the band back together. 

The mystery really kept me guessing. I thought I had it figured out. Guess what? I didn't! I loved the juxtaposition of the murderer's art against the architecture of Wren and Hawksmoor, an art form in its own right. As I said, the story will keep you guessing with a clever mystery reveal even at the very end. 

I recommend this book to anyone who loves historical fiction and mystery. Looking forward to the author's next book for sure!

About the book

Tempered by fire and separated by centuries, two extraordinary female detectives track a pair of murderous geniuses who will burn the world for their art in this mystery perfect for fans of Sarah Penner and Dan Brown.

Nigella Parker, Detective Inspector with the City Police, has a deeply rooted fear of fire and a talent for solving deadly arson cases. When a charred figure is found curled beside Sir Christopher Wren’s Monument to the Great Fire of London, Nigella is dragged into a case pitting her against a murderous artist creating sculptures using burnt flesh.

Nigella partners with Colm O’Leary of Scotland Yard to track the arsonist across greater London. The pair are more than colleagues—they were lovers until O’Leary made the mistake of uttering three little words. Their past isn’t the only buried history as they race to connect the dots between an antique nail pulled from a dead man’s hands and a long-forgotten architect dwarfed by the life’s work of Sir Christopher Wren.

Wren, one of London’s most famous architects, is everywhere the pair turn. Digging into his legacy leads the DCIs into the coldest of cold cases: a search for a bookseller gone missing during the Great Fire of London. More than 350 years earlier, while looking for their friend, a second pair of detectives—a lady-in-waiting to the Queen and a royal fireworks maker—discovered foul play in the supposedly accidental destruction of St. Paul’s Cathedral…but did that same devilry lead to murder? And can these centuries-old crimes help catch a modern-day murderer?

As Nigella and O’Leary rush to decode clues, past and present, London’s killer-artist sets his sights on a member of the investigative team as the subject of his next fiery masterpiece.

Expected publication: May 10th 2022 by Crooked Lane Books

Pre-Order Links

USA

EXCLUSIVE SIGNED Pre-Order Copies at BARD’S ALLEY https://bit.ly/SIGNED_Preorder

Amazon US https://bit.ly/And_by_Fire_Amazon

Hudson Booksellers https://bit.ly/And_by_Fire_Hudsons

Barnes and Noble https://bit.ly/And_by_Fire_Barnes_Noble

Bookshop . org https://bookshop.org/books/and-by-fire/9781643859934

Indie Bound https://bit.ly/And_By_Fire_Indiebound

Target https://bit.ly/AND_BY_FIRE_Target

Walmart https://bit.ly/AND_BY_FIRE_Walmart

UK

Waterstones: https://bit.ly/Waterstones_ANDBYFIRE

Blackwells: https://bit.ly/Blackwells_ANDBYFIRE

Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3nyZKtE

About the author

Crime writer Evie Hawtrey is a Yank by birth but a sister-in-spirit to her fierce and feminist London detective, DI Nigella Parker. Evie splits her time between Washington DC, where she lives with her husband, and York, UK, where she enjoys living in history, lingering over teas, and knocking around in pubs.

To learn more about Evie and her work, visit www.eviehawtrey.com

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This book was provided free of charge by the author/publisher through NetGalley.

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Cat Thursday - Stealin' all the foods

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Cat Thursday - Sign of the times

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

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Winter at a Summer House: Poems by Mary Beth Hines - Review

A beautiful collection of poems that largely focuses on delving into the past (and themes of family, nature, love). Something I suspect we all do, in our quiet moments...turn our eyes and hearts to the past. Because that's often where family dwells, certainly our younger selves too, with all the joy and learning and mistakes. It's a wonderful thing when one reads a poem and immediately recognizes something of themselves in those lines. Striking to me was "Scarborough Sail," the father playing with his child in the sea. Visions of myself and my dad in the ocean as he teaches me to body surf. "December Song" evoked memories of winters and the deer who would appear in our woods when I was growing up. 

"We slip from the forest on charmed, slender legs. 

Our eyes spark with starlight, we dip our sleek heads."

I recommend this collection to anyone who loves poetry and enjoys finding themselves among the lines. 

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In Winter at a Summer House, Mary Beth Hines’s poems speak to the sublime and risks in every middle-class home, small city neighborhood, seaside retreat, or suburban backyard. Vivid, tactile imagery suffuses the collection, which follows the arc of a life from birth/first words to death/last words. Together, these poems create a sometimes heartbreaking, but often humorous and joyous, narrative that speaks to all readers.

Advance Praise:

“The poems in Mary Beth Hines’s first collection, Winter at a Summer House, strike a wonderful balance between narratives of everyday experience and a pristine, pure poetic imagination. Always rhythmically diverse, most of the time mellifluous, and often intense, Hines’s poetry vividly paints the life of a modern self-made woman, with her worries and obligations, her family, and her dreams. In response to the heroine’s world, this poetry, never static, vibrates with all sorts of emotions: love, friendship, youthful
infatuations, amorousness, jealousy, altruism. As a result, the book gives its reader all the pleasures of a novel – and of lyric novelty.” – Katia Kapovich, the author of Gogol in Rome and Cossacks and Bandits

“Mary Beth Hines sings to us out of the staircases, back yards, and swimming pools of a life sumptuously lived, a world rife with joys and enticements, with girlhood wish and adulthood tryst. Each song lifts on the updrafts of a language passionately breathed, The poems are arrayed with such stunning craft that the art dissolves into the narrative. One forgets that one is reading and imagines that one is reliving this life. Winter at a Summer House is, in the words of one of the poems, a “gift to spark remembrance,” as if the memories had become our own.” -Tom Daley, the author of House You Cannot Reach

“Hines grew up in Massachusetts, adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, and the poems in this debut collection are filled with richly detailed imagery evoking the sea—of characters swimming, bathing, diving, as if time were an unpredictable element and living, a process of navigating unexpected currents. … A dynamic and colorful set of poems inspired by water and ocean imagery. ” – Kirkus Reviews

Available at Kelsay Books and Amazon.

About the author

Mary Beth Hines grew up in Massachusetts where she spent Saturday afternoons ditching ballet to pursue stories and poems deep in the stacks of the Waltham Public Library. She earned bachelor of arts in English from The College of the Holy Cross, and studied for a year at Durham University in England. She began a regular creative writing practice following a career in public service (Volpe Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts), leading award-winning national outreach, communications, and workforce programs. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction appear in dozens of literary journals and anthologies both nationally and abroad. Winter at a Summer House is her first poetry collection. When not reading or writing, she swims, walks in the woods, plays with friends, travels with her husband, and enjoys life with their family, including their two beloved grandchildren. Visit her online.

I received this book free of charge from the author. Thank you to Poetic Book Tours for inviting me to participate.

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Cat Thursday - Here's Johnny!

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

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Classics Club Spin 29 - The lucky number is....

11

I've been wanting to read this one ever since reading about Paul Huson and subsequently buying the book. So, pretty happy with the result. 

An enduring classic since its publication in 1970, Mastering Witchcraft is one of the best how-to manuals for those wishing to practice traditional European Witchcraft as a craft rather than a New Age religion. Starting from first principles, Huson instructs the novice step by step in the arts of circle casting, blessing and banning, the uses of amulets and talismans, philters, divination, necromancy, waxen images, knots, fascination, conjuration, magical familiars, spells to arouse passion or lust, attain vengeance, and of course, counter-spells to exorcize and annul the malice of others. "A genuine vade mecum."-The Catholic Herald. (Goodreads)

What did you get?

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