Archive for February, 2010

One Year with Pasqualina

Today marks one year since our kid Pasqualina came to live with us. This was then:

And this is now:

And just for fun, another from about a year ago:

And today:

I guess I can’t really call her a kid any more now that she’s ready to have kids of her own. Yes, that pink you see up there on that second photo is our Pasqualina filling up with milk. We expect kids in mid-March or so, but we’re not quite sure of the date of spermination (the buck was in the pen for a month).

What a year it’s been…can’t wait to see what this next one brings!


E-Book Giveaway & Guest Post by Author Elisa Lorello

As part of the WOW blog tour, Elisa Lorello stops by Bleeding Espresso today to talk about something that has within the past few months become near and dear to my heart: e-books!

Since I treated myself to an iPod Touch two months ago, I’ve become a proud e-book convert after *swearing* I would never get used to the feel of a gadget in my hand instead of all those gorgeous pages. Of course I still love paper books, but getting used to e-books was *much* easier than I had imagined–and talk about instant gratification. I can pick out a book and have it literally in my hands in SECONDS.

Elisa is the author of Faking It and Ordinary World, and has offered up some free e-copies for lucky BE readers. Just leave a comment on this post by midnight on Sunday, February 28 (Italy time), and you’re eligible. You can get extra entries by tweeting or posting about the contest on your blog and/or Facebook (four possible entries total). Be sure to let me know about your extra entries via e-mail, Twitter, or FB.

Now, here’s Elisa!

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E-books Are My Friend

E-books and e-readers have been the target of some doomsday scenarios. “Watch out, they’ll destroy the publishing industry as we know it.” “Bookstores will be no more.” And while it’s true that the e-reader (namely, the Amazon Kindle) has rattled booksellers, I’m not ready to paint it as the Big Bad Wolf just yet.

Maybe because e-publishing has been good to me. Last month, my novels Faking It and Ordinary World hit the Kindle Store Bestseller list. Faking It even cracked the Top 10! The Kindle Store was able to provide me with the mass distribution that chain brick-and-mortar stores typically refuse an independent author. That, in turn, provided me with a readership and recognition.

But that doesn’t diminish my love for the tactile book, or bookstores. Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC, for example, is one of my favorite places to be and one of the first places I show off to my out-of-town visitors. Moreover, if I’m not at a coffeeshop to write, then I’ve snagged a comfy chair so I can read a book. And my home is cluttered with books on shelves, nightstands, coffeetables, you name it. It’s a comforting feeling to be surrounded by books.

So who said you had to love either one or the other? Since when did a pleasurable reading experience become an ultimatum, warranting the kind of loyalty you’d show for your favorite sports team? My bookworm friends who own e-readers say they haven’t stopped buying (or reading) tactile books. The e-reader is a tool of convenience, great for travel, for example.

I see no difference between the e-book as one more reading experience option just as audiobooks are an option. In fact, I often listen to an audiobook during my daily commute or road trips. People download audiobooks on their MP3 players as well.

I think e-books and print books can peacefully co-exist, and I hope they do. I even think my protagonist, a writing professor and published author, would own an e-reader and be spotted in Harvard Square, a latte in tow, reading her husband’s favorite books. You could count on it.

Ordinary World is currently available in print and e-book at Lulu.com, and in e-book at Amazon Kindle Store.

About the author:

Elisa Lorello was born and raised on Long Island, New York. In 1995, she moved to southeastern Massachusetts, where she attended University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth for both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Her career in rhetoric and composition studies began in 2000, and since then she has been teaching first-year writing at the university level. Currently, Elisa lives and teaches in North Carolina and is co-writing her third novel. She is happily single.

To learn more about Elisa and her other writing projects, please visit her blog I’ll Have What She’s Having: The Official Blog of Elisa Lorello, or her official webpage at ElisaLorello.com. You can also follow Elisa on Twitter @elisalorello.

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For more information on e-books in general, check out these great articles written by Sara (of Ms Adventures in Italy fame) at her tech blog, When I Have Time.

Remember to comment for your chance to win some e-books!


Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner

I really loved Jennifer Weiner‘s first two books Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, so I was beyond excited to get an email asking if I’d like a review copy of her latest effort, Best Friends Forever.

Here is a quick plot summary from the book jacket:

Addie Downs and Valerie Adler will be best friends forever. That’s what Addie believes after Valerie moves across the street when they’re both nine years old. But in the wake of betrayal during their teenage years, Val is swept into the popular crowd, while mousy, sullen Addie becomes her school’s scapegoat.

Flash-forward fifteen years. Valerie Adler has found a measure of fame and fortune working as the weathergirl at the local TV station. Addie Downs lives alone in her parents’ house in their small hometown of Pleasant Ridge, Illinois, caring for a troubled brother and trying to meet Prince Charming on the Internet. She’s just returned from Bad Date #6 when she opens her door to find her long-gone best friend standing there, a terrified look on her face and blood on the sleeve of her coat. “Something horrible has happened,” Val tells Addie, “and you’re the only one who can help.”

I dove into this book with excitement and was still excited through the first few chapters as I got to know Addie and Val . . . but then I lost excitement as I, well, got to know Addie and Val.

I just didn’t connect with these characters or care what happened to them. I found them both to be rather pathetic in their own ways and cliché at that; needless to say, I didn’t find myself rooting for either one of them.

I also found the plot contrived and strange (unbelievable might be the word I’m looking for here), and I *really* wasn’t feeling the continual back story via flashbacks (I was always taught this was a huge no-no in storytelling and now I see why). When it comes down to it, the actual action in this book would probably fill 50 pages or so–and unfortunately that particular action seemed absurd at times.

All that said, I didn’t have any trouble picking the book back up again once I put it down or even finishing it, which I must attribute to Weiner’s writing; I love her conversational style and storytelling–I just didn’t particularly like *this* story or its characters.

Overall, this is still an OK book for the beach or to pass a weekend afternoon or two, but I’m sorry to say I did expect more from Weiner. If you’re looking to pick up her writing for the first time, be sure to go with one of her first two efforts and leave this one for later down the line, if at all.

I give this three espresso cups out of five, and do look forward to Weiner’s next book.


Love Thursday: To the Bestest Readers!

It’s been a while since I’ve stopped and really thanked all of you for continuing to come and visit me here at the blog, on Twitter @michellefabio, and/or on the blog’s Facebook fan page (seven away from 700 as I type this!).

One of the best things about you, dear readers, is that you talk back. You communicate, you leave comments, you take part in discussions, you share thoughts and experiences, and you even send photos!

Indeed, recently I got some hearts from readers for Love Thursday:

  1. MOMA cappuccino from A Friend in California (who has contributed before)
  2. Valentine’s Day Egg by Sarah Dallas (sent by Judy of CoffeeJitters–and yes, this really happened on V Day!)
  3. Potato Chip Love by Angela in Hollywood, FL
  4. Winter Heart from the Amalfi Coast by Laura at Ciao Amalfi!

Thank you, photographers, and

thanks also to everyone else who chips (hah!) in to make BE a lively, fun place!

Happy Love Thursday everyone!

P.S. Mosaic was made at BigHugeLabs.


Book Giveaway: The Mystery of Lewis Carroll by Jenny Woolf

One of the best things about having this blog is the frequency with which I “meet” kind, like-minded people.

Case in point: A while back, I got an email from Jenny Woolf, author of The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created “Alice in Wonderland, who wanted to chat a bit about blogging, book promotion, and the like. I quickly offered Jenny space here to introduce herself and her book as I, too, was fascinated to learn about why she chose Lewis Carroll as her subject.

I became even more interested in the back story once I started reading through The Mystery of Lewis Carroll (Jenny had sent me a proof copy). I love biographies in general, and this one about a legendary literary figure who has been portrayed in so many different lights does *not* disappoint. Even though many scholars have written about Carroll, Jenny managed to uncover something that no other researcher ever had before. Fascinating!

Haus Publishing has kindly offered up a free copy of The Mystery of Lewis Carroll for one lucky Bleeding Espresso reader, but you must have a mailing address in the UK, Europe, or the Commonwealth (where the publisher has distribution rights). If you’d like to win a copy and meet this criteria, please leave a comment below by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 21.

I will be announcing the winner on the Bleeding Espresso Facebook fan page and via Twitter @michellefabio. If you’re not a fan or following, please correct that!

Here’s Jenny, who you can also read at her blog, From Somewhere in Time and follow on Twitter @jennywoolf:

I loved Alice from when I was seven, and first became enthralled by her adventures. And I ended up writing The Mystery of Lewis Carroll because I wanted to know more about the man who had created my favorite book.

I started, like anyone would, by reading the biographies of him. But you know, I didn’t entirely believe any of them. As a  journalist I’d written many magazine profiles, and I was well used to subjects and their friends trying to pull the wool over my eyes. So I wondered if Carroll had been using the Victorian equivalent of “spin” to hide various aspects of his own life.

I wasn’t thinking of writing a biography at this stage – I just wanted to understand Carroll. So my next approach was to start looking for little-known and unpublished documents that might illuminate him more.

I had some luck when I found his personal bank account, unseen for over 100 years and mouldering away in a bank archive. With my husband Tony, I transcribed, annotated and self published it as “Lewis Carroll in His Own Account,” and the BBC quickly got in touch and asked for a radio programme about it.

I did the programme . . . but I still didn’t think of writing a biography.

No, I wanted to create a highly illustrated, imaginative and colourful multimedia project to describe Carroll – because by now I’d discovered he was actually a fascinating, unusual, likeable, (although tricksy and secretive) person.

But publishers are conservative creatures. In the end, my multimedia dreams evaporated and I ended up writing a biography after all.

Or almost. Actually I prefer to think of it as a portrait. Because it doesn’t start at the beginning and end at the end like most biographies do. Instead, it takes ten important themes in Lewis Carroll’s life, and examines what they meant to him. From Alice in Wonderland to photography, from his little girl friends to his religious and supernatural interests, from his family to his sex life, I hope that it will offer a glimpse of the kind of human, emotional, eccentric and utterly unique person that he was.

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The Mystery of Lewis Carroll was published in the US on 2 February by St Martin’s Press and will be published on 1 March in the UK by Haus Publishing.

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Remember to leave a comment to win your copy! For those not eligible, please still feel free to leave your comment or question for Jenny–or even your own personal Alice in Wonderland memory (please tell me you’re not eligible though)!


Michelle KaminskyMichelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived. 

Calabria Guidebook

Calabria travel guide by Michelle Fabio

Recipes

 

Homemade apple butter
Green beans, potatoes, and pancetta
Glazed Apple Oatmeal Cinnamon Muffins
Pasta with snails alla calabrese
Onion, Oregano, and Thyme Focaccia
Oatmeal Banana Craisin Muffins
Prosciutto wrapped watermelon with bel paese cheese
Fried eggs with red onion and cheese
Calabrian sausage and fava beans
Ricotta Pound Cake