Chew & Digest Books

Cross-Bloggination is a brainchild of mine that spawned during the recent Bloggiesta. I knew I wanted to reach out to some bloggers and create a monthly feature that would give our usual readers something a little out of the ordinary. Gwen from Chew & Digest Books and Danielle from There’s a Book responded to the call. The last Friday of each month we will be posting on each others blogs and providing you all with something new and different to see; a featured book out of the books we’ve read that month – this book is special and one that really sticks in our minds as being a fantastic read.

I invite you to head over to both their blogs – I will be hosting Danielle this month and Danielle will be hosting Gwen.

It was rough for me to come up with a favorite book this month – I’ve read fantastic books ranging from older books like The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood to new ones such as Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok. I’ve read about dragons and the Napoleonic wars in the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik and then.. I traveled to North Carolina and fell in love with a little town called Mullaby – where there is a giant, the aroma of cakes and the mystery of glowing lights in the night-time.

I fell in love with Southern Literature fairly recently with Beth Hoffman’s Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and it wasn’t with a small bit of anticipation that I picked up The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen. I felt that catch in the back of my throat that I’ve come to recognize as a sign of anticipation and book-lovers joy when I know I am picking up a book I am going to fall in love with.

And sometimes it’s that easy, you know? It could be the title that does it for me… and who wouldn’t love a title such as this one? It could be just the name of the author, or the cover of the book. Maybe it’s those first few magical sentences. All I know is that when Grandpa Vance began to speak of the wallpaper in Emily’s room I got chills.

Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood.

Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight.

And a neighbor bakes hope in the form of cakes.

I immediately purchased a copy of this book after I read my library copy. I hadn’t even closed the book completely before I was clicking buy on my B&N screen. This is a book I’ll be passing around to my neighbors and purchasing more copies of to distribute at Christmas-time, not because the book is profound and full of deep insight or is a masterpiece of scholarly writing… but because this book made me feel as if I was home and that my soul could rest.

My review of this fantastic book will be up at my website, The Lost Entwife, in the upcoming week. I invite you to come check it out and to leave your own comments here about what book provides rest in your soul for you.