King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: To Be Sung Underwater

author: Tom McNeal

source: sent for review from Blue Dot Literary

pages: 436

published: 2011

first line: The man sits hidden among pines on a bluff overlooking the grid farms and country roads lying north.

rated: 5 out of 5 stars












What a great find To Be Sung Underwater has turned out to be.

With it's wonderful writing, moving storyline and dynamic characters, this was one of those books that I lost myself in for a few days.




One summer, while living in Nebraska with her father, Judith Toomey met and fell in love with a carpenter named Willy Blunt.

When she left for college, she promised him she would return and marry him.
Instead, Judith wound up meeting and marrying a banker named Malcom and has a daughter named Camille. She never returned to her lost love in Nebraska.



Now twenty seven years later, Judith has never forgotten Willy. Memories of him intertwine with her everyday life. For a while, she'd call his house then hang up when his mother answered. She still keeps his photo in her wallet.


The story flashes back from the summer when Judith was in love with Willy and living in Nebraska, to her current day life as a film editor.

In her current life, Judith has good reason to believe that her husband Malcom is cheating on her. She wonders if she herself has fallen out of love with him.





Judith came from a broken home, her parents having divorced when she was a teen. I liked reading the flashbacks of Judith and her father. He would read her Pride & Prejudice and Judith would ask him if she would ever be like Elizabeth Bennett. Judith decided to stay with her father permanently as the two had a close bond.



Reading about Judith and Willy made me think those two were meant to be together.
Their love story just drew me in. Their first date is the simple and romantic kind that just makes the reader sigh. The Nebraska setting for their summer love was perfect and I could easily envision the sights and sounds during their private rendezvous in the Adirondack-like mountains.

She closed her eyes. He said nothing. Neither did she. She just lay feeling the sun touching her and listening to the slow, strangely vivid creak of the dock, the watery rocking of the kayak, the occasional cry of a bird, and she wondered what it meant that stripping her life down to as little as this could afford more contentment than anything more complicated ever would.

p.384

I found Judith's current life to be a sad one. She rents out a storage unit for her childhood furniture and recreates her teenage bedroom in Nebraska. Judith hires a private detective to find Willy. I did wonder why would Judith remain in this unhappy marriage, but she was one of the complex characters within this story and as I read I hoped for her happy ending.

These, then, were the beginnings of what Judith later thought of as the Summer of Willy Blunt. All at once her life of latency and quiescence had turned metaphoric.

p.239

I loved this novel. To Be Sung Underwater will be on my top reads for 2011. This is the kind of story that begs to be discussed and one that you reflect on long after the last page is turned.



I think this book would make for a great movie as well. There is romance, heartache and drama weaved within the story and I found it hard to put down.


Another thing I like about this book is the cover. Isn't it serene looking? It fits the story perfectly.

To Be Sung Underwater was a wonderful read from cover to cover and I highly recommend it if you are looking for a good book to get lost in.

The days slid by, Judith and Willy fell into the lazy rhythm of their secret life, carried along by the presumption that all the foreseeable tomorrows would be more or less like the day before them.

p.273

Special thanks to Blue Dot Literary for sending me a copy.
















ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom McNeal is a critically-acclaimed author of many short stories and the novel, Goodnight, Nebraska; for which he won the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize. McNeal was born in Santa Ana, California, where his father and grandfather raised oranges. He spent part of every summer at the Nebraska farm where his mother was born and raised, and after earning a BA in English at UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing at UC Irvine, he taught school in the town that was the inspiration for Goodnight, Nebraska. Tom has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, and his short stories have been widely anthologized.

Happy Friday blog friends. I recently read and reviewed A Bad Day For Pretty, which is a crime mystery with some humor, a bit of romance and a no nonsense heroine. I really enjoyed the book and am thrilled that author Sophie Littlefield has been kind enough to stop by my blog for an interview.









Bookworm: Welcome to my blog Sophie, and thank you for taking the time our of your busy schedule for this interview. Please tell us a bit about yourself.



Sophie: I’m a forty-something author from Northern California. I was a stay-at-home mom and homemaker for many years, but I have also been writing for decades. A few years ago I made writing my full time job, and in 2008 I got an agent and sold my first book. Since then I’ve written quite a few more books, and with the help of my agent I’ve contracted for three series at three different publishers.


I spend most of my time either sitting in my chair working away, or with my kids, who are both in high school. I’m also blessed with fantastic friends in the writing community, and I might just spend a fair amount of time hanging out with them in bars and talking about – what else – books. My family, and my non-writing friends, have been very patient with me, but I think they believe I’m obsessed. And they may be right.





Bookworm: In A Bad Day For Pretty, Stella Hardesty is an avenger for women who have suffered from spousal abuse. Shes a great heroine, strong, intelligent and sassy. How did you come up with her character? Is she inspired by anyone you know?


Sophie: Erm, um, the sad truth is that all of Stella’s baser instincts – her jealous, mean, frustrated, insecure, or bitchy moments – are all me. Her better moments, when she is striving to help other women, when she is generous and kind and brave – that is the ideal that I would like to strive for.


I created Stella when I was still newly arrived in middle age, when I was in the “you-have-got-to-be-kidding” stage. I think some women, after they’ve experienced the down side of middle age for a while, learn to take it in stride – the hot flashes and weight gain and failing eyesight, being ignored or condescended to by strangers, being portrayed as matronly and sexless by the media, watching men our age abandon ship to go shopping for younger models – but in the initial throes there’s a sort of shocked fury that I channeled into creating the character.





Bookworm: A Bad Day For Pretty is your second book featuring Stella, the first being A Bad Day For Sorry, will there be a third book?


Sophie: Yes, and thank you for asking! The third, tentatively titled A BAD DAY FOR FANCY, will be out next spring. A fourth, which I am currently writing, will come out the following year. And I will keep writing them as long as there is an audience who wants to read them.







Bookworm:What was the hardest thing about writing this book? How long did it take you to write?


Sophie: This book practically wrote itself in a brief but intense period early in 2008. I had just finished a book that didn’t sell, after writing several other novels over the course of a decade that didn’t sell, and I was a little tired of trying to follow all the rules and write the book I thought the market wanted to buy. So A BAD DAY FOR SORRY was a little treat for me, a hell-bent project where I broke all the rules I’d been dying to break and just wrote flat-out for the joy of it.






Bookworm: Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?


Sophie: I’d like to thank them for giving a chance to a book that’s a little different from what we’ve come to expect from popular fiction. In particular I would like to tell them how much I appreciate their support for Stella, who isn’t young or pretty or educated or even very polite.


When I was trying to find a home for the book, several people suggested that I make Stella younger, better-looking, and less profane. I’m truly thrilled that I didn’t have to do that. I like Stella the way she is and I’m grateful to everyone who allowed me to keep her that way.






Bookworm:Who are your favorite authors and what is it that really strikes you about their work?


Sophie: I appreciate authors in any genre who make me feel deeply. A romance that tugs at my cynical heart, a thriller that terrifies me, a noir mystery that makes me think hard about the human condition…a young adult novel that reminds me of how hard it was to grow up, a graphic novel that gets my pulse racing. I’m always on the lookout for authors who are new to me, and I listen when a friend says there’s someone I “really have to read.” Recently I’ve been introduced to Marisa de los Santos, Clive Barker, and Derek Nikitas that way.





Bookworm:If your book was to be made into a film, what famous Hollywood actors would you chose to play Stella & Goat? How about Chrissy?


Sophie: I love this game! Goat is definitely J.K. Simmons (the dad in Juno). I think Wynnona Judd would make a great Stella. As for Chrissy…the problem is that there aren’t many plus-size young actresses getting juicy roles, so either some brave actress is going to have to give in and eat a few cheeseburgers, or some talent scout is going to have to discover some overlooked future star. There’s a young actress named Rebecca Field who’s had some TV roles who might be a good fit.






Bookworm: Last but not least, if you were stranded on a deserted island, and were allowed to bring 3 items with you, what would they be?


Sophie: If you let me count my kids as one (which would keep me entertained), that would let me bring a giant tub of Cetaphil moisturizing cream and a crate of Triscuits, which I believe are the perfect food.



Bookworm: Thank you again Sophie! I enjoyed reading your answers. I like Stella just the way she is too and am glad to hear there will be third and fourth books. I think Wynnona Judd would play a great Stella :)

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special thanks to Tony over @ Blue Dot Literary for making this possible.

title: A Bad Day For Pretty


author: Sophie Littlefield

genre: crime fiction


published: 2010


pages: 292


first line: Mama was already down in the cellar with Gracellen and Patches.


rated: 3 1/2 out of 5








A Bad Day For Pretty is Sophie Littlefield's second book featuring Stella Hardesty, a middle-aged widow who helps women who are suffering from marital abuse. Stella kind of takes the law into her own hands when it comes to abusive husbands. She also owns a sewing machine shop in town.



Stella has feelings for the local sheriff, "Goat" Jones, but as the two are having a romantic dinner, there is a knock on the door and it's no other than Goat's estranged (and trashy), soon to be ex-wife, Brandy. To top it all off, there is a tornado in town that unearths a woman's body. Stella's friend Nebuchadnezzar Donovan...a.k.a. Neb, is accused of murdering the woman.



Chrissy, a young single mom, is one of the women that Stella has helped escape an abusive husband. Chrissy now lives above Stella's sewing shop and works for her as well. She is helping Stella solve the mystery of the 'mummy' that has been unearthed by the tornado. As the story unfolds, there are twists and turns as Stella and Chrissy try to figure out 'who dunnit'.





I liked Stella from the start. She's exactly what you want in a heroine. She's smart, sassy and doesn't take crap from anyone. I also liked that Stella is your average, every day girl, with her own natural beauty. She doesn't look like a barbie doll, nor does she want to. I was rooting for her to win Goat's heart, solve the murder mystery and live happily ever after. I enjoyed the supporting characters as well. Chrissy amused me using her charms as the two women tried to get clues in solving the case. Goat was sweet and couldn't help always trying to save damsels in distress, meanwhile the women in his life are driving him nuts.
If you enjoy a good mystery with some humor and romance, grab a copy of A Bad Day For Pretty.

There was a level, deep below the surface, where women in need connected with each other, where they found out about solutions of last resort, where Stella's number was passed along in whispers and secrecy was guaranteed by all those terrible layers of fear and desperation.

Also by Sophie Littlefield :


A Bad Day For Sorry







special thanks to Tony over @ Blue Dot Literary for making this possible.

title: Never Tell Our Business to Strangers

author: Jennifer Mascia


published: 2010

pages: 383

genre: memoir

rated: 3 1/2 out of 5








Never Tell Our Business to Strangers is journalists Jennifer Mascia's memoir about growing up an only child who ends up finding out her parents were living a double life. Jennifer's father John Mascia, whom she thought was a carpet cleaner, was selling drugs, was associated with the mafia and at one time served prison time for murder. The first time the FBI came for her dad, Jennifer was just five years old. To calm her down, Jennifer was told that her dad was acting in a movie.



Her mom went from shopping sprees and wearing designer clothes, to maxing out credit cards then filing for bankruptcy. Jennifer and her parents were always on the move. While her father was in prison, she and her mom would stay with family and friends, moving from New York, to Florida to California.
Her dad kept his cash hidden in a hole below the carpet at home and soon Jennifer found out that both her parents used false names and social security numbers. She also found out that she and her parents were living as fugitives on the run for five years. When Jennifer finally found out about her family's secrets, she was stunned and hurt.

I had a family, however imperfect, and not that long ago. I had a life, albeit one that doesn't remotely resemble the one I'm living now. Where there was once a house full of laughter and argument and cooking smells there is now nothing, just a furnished reverie that exists only in my memory. Sometimes I wonder if my time with them was real.

I enjoyed reading Never Tell Our Business to Strangers. I found this to be an interesting memoir. You can tell by reading it that Jennifer loves her parent and misses them. You can also see that her parents wanted to keep her sheltered from the awful truth. I did feel that the book could have been a bit shorter, there's parts where she ventures off into details of events and dialogue that I didn't think were necessary.



About the author:

Jennifer Mascia graduated from Hunter College in 2001, and in 2007 she received an M.S. from Columbia University ’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has spent the past three years as the nightside news assistant on the Metro desk of The New York Times.






Special thanks to Tony Viardo @ Blue Dot Literary for making this possible.