Book Spotlight Giveaway! The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton

I have sooooo many books! The Book Spotlight Giveaway feature that I post every Saturday is a way for me to clear my shelves and to share some of the many books I have. This feature is a way for my to cull my collection and to give someone else the opportunity to enjoy these treasures.

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This week, I have an ARC of The Wednesday Daughters, which is a duplicate on my shelves. This is book #2 in this series. The first book is The Wednesday Sisters, which I read in 2013 and loved. Someday I'll get this one read!

Good luck and be sure to stop back next week!

The Wednesday Daughters

The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton
Series: Wednesday #2
ARC, 304 pages
Published July 16th 2013 by Ballantine Books

Meg Waite Clayton, nationally bestselling author of The Wednesday Sisters, returns with a compassionate, wise, and enthralling new novel of mothers and daughters, best friends who become family, and secrets and dreams passed down through the generations.

It is early evening when Hope Tantry arrives at the small cottage in England’s pastoral Lake District where her mother, Ally, spent the last years of her life. Ally—one of a close-knit group of women who called themselves “The Wednesday Sisters”—had used the cottage as a writer’s retreat while she worked on her unpublished biography of Beatrix Potter, yet Hope knows nearly nothing about her mother’s time there. Traveling with Hope are friends Julie and Anna Page, two other daughters of “The Wednesday Sisters,” who offer to help Hope sort through her mother’s personal effects. Yet what Hope finds will reveal a tangled family history—one steeped in Lake District lore.

Tucked away in a hidden drawer, Hope finds a stack of Ally’s old notebooks, all written in a mysterious code. As she, Julie, and Anna Page try to decipher Ally’s writings—the reason for their encryption, their possible connection to the Potter manuscript—they are forced to confront their own personal struggles: Hope’s doubts about her marriage, Julie’s grief over losing her twin sister, Anna Page’s fear of commitment in relationships. And as the real reason for Ally’s stay in England comes to light, Hope, Julie, and Anna Page reach a new understanding about the enduring bonds of family, the unwavering strength of love, and the inescapable pull of the past.

Book #1

Check out both books on Goodreads.

About the Author

Meg Waite Clayton is a New York Times bestselling author of the forthcoming The Last Train to London (HarperCollins, Sept 10, 2019), the #1 Amazon fiction bestseller Beautiful Exiles, the Langum-Prize honored national bestseller The Race for Paris -- recommended reading by Glamour Magazine and the BBC, and an Indie Next Booksellers' pick -- and The Wednesday Sisters, one of Entertainment Weekly's "25 Essential Best Friend Novels" of all time. Her The Language of Light was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize (now PEN/Bellwether Prize), and she's written essays for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Runner's World, Writer's Digest and lots of other swanky publications she never imagined she might! ~ Goodreads

Connect with Meg

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

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Gratitude Giveaway Hop! Start Hopping to Win!!

November 15 - 30

Thanks and gratitude go out to Mary @ Bookhounds for hosting this wonderful hop! This hop is a way for us bloggers to say "Thank You!" to our followers.

I started The Book Bag 10 years ago and so appreciate each and every one of you who have found me over the years and am grateful for the one's who have stuck with me. I love reading and blogging and I am having the time of my life!

So as a way to thank you, we have 40 blogs participating in this hop. There are some wonderful things you could win. For a chance to win here at The Book Bag, all you have to do is follow me in some way.

Enter the rafflecopter here and then check out all the other blogs for more fabulous prizes!

This giveaway is for any book of your choice up to $15, from either Amazon (US) or The Book Depository (INT) if they deliver to your country. Winners have 48 hours to respond to an email or another winner will be selected.

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Love is a Rebellious Bird by Elayne Klasson ~ Q&A with the Author

Love is a Rebellious Bird by Elayne Klasson
Paperback and e-book, 336 pages
Published November 12th 2019 by She Writes Press

Who is it we love and why do we love these people?

Toward the end of her life, Judith asks these questions, trying to understand why she chose Elliot Pine to love. Why, for sixty years, did she persist in loving someone who never gave as much as he was given? In her quest for understanding, she writes her story to this exceptional man. 

Meeting as children in Chicago, they move to opposite coasts. Elliot embarks on a remarkable legal career in Washington and New York while Judith raises her children alone in California, after tragedy. Coming together again and again throughout their lives, their love is never equal, Elliot defining the terms of the relationship. 

Judith examines the role of Beauty in love, for Elliot's face and form were beautiful. She considers the role of Consolation, how they supported one another in devastating times. Insanity, Magic, Deceit, Sensory Fulfillment, and, finally, Being Seen—Judith looks at these many aspects of her love. 

Her feelings for this man cost her, impinged on every other relationship in her life: friends, her two husbands, even her three children. After sixty years, however, it all changes. Judith makes one more profound sacrifice, finally achieving a sort of long-awaited happiness in her love.

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I posted my thoughts yesterday about Love is a Rebellious Bird. I found it to be a very interesting, and compelling look at love and relationships. You can read my thoughts here. Today, Elayne is her to answer a few questions about her new book and about herself. Enjoy! 

1. Can you tell us where the title of this work came from?

The title comes from the opening line of The Habanera, the aria sung by Carmen in Bizet’s great opera of the 1870s. Flamboyant Carmen sings of how you can’t control love. When love does come, you may not want it. However, “...you call him quite in vain if it suits him not to come…”. There is also a lyric in The Habanera saying “love has never, ever, known a law…” which is fitting and ironic as Elliot, the object of Judith’s love, is a prominent lawyer, for whom the law serves as a type of religion. This is actually the first and fourth title! I abandoned it originally after a friend in publishing dismissively said, “no one likes opera.” But then, after trying two other titles, went back to the original. I love opera.

2. Why did you choose to write this novel in second person – to have Judith speak directly to Elliot?

I found that after the book was nearly complete, I questioned who Judith was telling her story to. I wasn’t happy with this being told to an anonymous audience. I thought Judith could finally be honest with Elliot by telling the story to him..addressing him even if there was a possibility he might not hear her. She had, for so long, been afraid to express her true feelings to him. If Portnoy hadn’t already done it so perfectly, I might have had it be in a long therapy session!

3. Childhood love is often dismissed as naive, but Love is a Rebellious Bird follows lovers from childhood throughout their mature lives. Why do you think it’s important we discuss and acknowledge love at every stage of our lives?

I agree that childhood love is often dismissed. Yet, I think these formative relationships in pre-adolescent and teen years are crucially important to who we become and how we view ourselves in relationship to others. I am in such awe of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend and the subsequent 3 books in her Neapolitan Quartet. She explores relationships formed in the character’s early years and how this put a deep mark on the women the girls in the quartet become. In Love is a Rebellious Bird, Judith had such admiration and adoration and compassion for Elliot as a kid, no one else could ever match up. She says in the novel that her feelings for him, even when they were young, become the definition of what love is. Similarly, the rejection she experienced from Elliot and others in their elementary and high school years, left marks on her, perhaps forever. I think the sometimes cruel rankings kids give each other, may stay with us. I went to my 50th high school reunion recently. It was a large Chicago high school and a surprisingly well-attended event. And while there were many surprises, the crowds and cliques were still firmly in place.

4. You have lived in a variety of locations over the years, from the midwest, to Barbados, to California. Has this sort of worldliness influenced your approach to writing or the way you understand your characters?

Perhaps the years in the midwest, the Caribbean, and northern and southern California has convinced me of the importance of our universal search for love. I’ve been a columnist in both the Caribbean and California, and it is obvious that everyone wants to be “seen” and understood through intimate relationships. I interview people for most of my columns and I know how much people (old, young, disabled, athletes, professionals, working class) want to be heard and how rarely we listen deeply to each other. I also know that coming into people’s lives at a particular age means we never get to know the person they were in earlier stages. My husband and I recently moved to a different area of California, four hours south of the previous town we’d lived in. I feel sad that no one really knows who we were earlier, just as I can only guess at the rich and juicy lives of the people we are meeting now who are in the later stages of their life (sixties, seventies, beyond). Who were the babes? The powerful men? What were the tragedies? The accomplishments?

5. While this is your debut novel, you have extensive experience a columnist and journalist. What was your experience in this transition?

I have been writing fiction for twenty-five years. Plowing away at it. My idea was that if I kept writing, I’d keep getting better and eventually, I’d get read. I won a few awards, writer’s residencies, but got very little recognition. But I kept writing fiction because I love doing it. I love creating characters and populating a world with them. But novels take years to complete, and I live inside them. Writing columns and features is another matter completely. It allows me to finish something in a few hours and have that sense of completion and see it in print the next week. It also allows me to broaden my world by talking to real people..not just the ones in my head!

6. Do you find that your background in psychology and studying human behavior has aided you in your writing, especially your fiction writing?

I really do love talking to people and trying to figure out what makes them tick. The act of giving someone your undivided attention, is a successful one in both a therapeutic sense as well as in writing and in life. For years, I taught a university course called, “Frames of Reference,” in which I would lecture psychology students on the various therapeutic schools: analytic, behavioral, humanistic. But I always stressed that the most successful therapeutic method is to truly listen deeply, giving the person the honor of being really paid attention to. I think this works in newspaper interviews and in fiction writing. In fiction, I try to really listen to the character’s voice and what they might be saying and feeling. Sometimes the characters come from real life as I remember them, sometimes they are completely imaginary. But I try to listen respectfully.

About the author

Author Elayne Klasson has never done anything just halfway:  from a  career of scholastic achievements, contributions to society and bold moves, to her rise as a writer to successful newspaper columnist. Her debut novel, Love is a Rebellious Bird, is no exception—her first to be published with She Writes Press.

Elayne grew up in Chicago. She went to university and graduate school in the Midwest—Ohio State University and the University of Michigan—where she earned a Masters of Public Health and a PhD in Psychology. For several years she lived in Barbados, West Indies, working as a health care consultant with Project Hope; then returning as a writer and columnist for the Barbados Daily Nation.

Her professional career has largely been in academia at San Jose State University, with her research and clinical area of expertise being the severely mentally ill. A recent transplant to the Santa Ynez Valley, near Santa Barbara, California, she is a popular lifestyle newspaper columnist there. Elayne has appeared on San Francisco public television as a restaurant critic.

She’s been awarded several writer’s residencies, including Hedgebrook Writers' Colony on Whidbey Island, Washington and Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, California.

She daily walks her young dachshund and aged fluffy white rescue through nearby vineyards. Married to David, a scientist, they have five children between them, all grown. ~ Author's website

Connect with Elayne

Website | Instragram | Goodreads | Amazon

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Release Day! Love is a Rebellious Bird by Elayne Klasson ~ My Thoughts #LoveIsARebelliousBird

Happy Release Day!

Congratulations Elayne

 on the release today of

Love is a Rebellious Bird!

Love is a Rebellious Bird by Elayne Klasson
Paperback and e-book, 336 pages
Published November 12th 2019 by She Writes Press

Who is it we love and why do we love these people?

Toward the end of her life, Judith asks these questions, trying to understand why she chose Elliot Pine to love. Why, for sixty years, did she persist in loving someone who never gave as much as he was given? In her quest for understanding, she writes her story to this exceptional man. 

Meeting as children in Chicago, they move to opposite coasts. Elliot embarks on a remarkable legal career in Washington and New York while Judith raises her children alone in California, after tragedy. Coming together again and again throughout their lives, their love is never equal, Elliot defining the terms of the relationship. 

Judith examines the role of Beauty in love, for Elliot's face and form were beautiful. She considers the role of Consolation, how they supported one another in devastating times. Insanity, Magic, Deceit, Sensory Fulfillment, and, finally, Being Seen—Judith looks at these many aspects of her love. 

Her feelings for this man cost her, impinged on every other relationship in her life: friends, her two husbands, even her three children. After sixty years, however, it all changes. Judith makes one more profound sacrifice, finally achieving a sort of long-awaited happiness in her love.

My thoughts about Love is a Rebellious Bird ~~

(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)

First line—"Over seventy, I am considered by most of the world and for most of history, an old woman. I find that all of those things said about getting old are true."

Love is a Rebellious Bird is, in essence, a sad but touching love letter from Judith to her one true love, Elliot. As their relationship spans over sixty years, Judith documents her feelings and the love, mostly unrequited, that she has for her friend. Sad though it is that Elliot never feels as deeply as she does, Love is a Rebellious Bird is still a heartwarming, beautiful story. 

Over her long life, Judith hangs on to the one friend who has been a constant in her life. Through husbands, death, divorce, and children she has always known that he would be there. In reality though, he was there when it was convenient for him, not her. But still, she always held out hope that someday he would love her and need her as much as she loved and needed him. I have to admit, there where times that I just wanted to shake her and make her see his true worth and to tell her she deserved so much more. 

Love is a Rebellious Bird is an excellent character-driven novel, which focuses on the mindset of one woman as she maneuvers through her life—as she struggles to finds her happiness and her purpose. 

Thank you to JKS Communications and She Writes Press for an ARC of Love is a Rebellious Bird. This is my honest review of the book. 

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Be sure to stop back tomorrow to check out a very interesting interview with Elayne. 

About the author

Author Elayne Klasson has never done anything just halfway:  from a  career of scholastic achievements, contributions to society and bold moves, to her rise as a writer to successful newspaper columnist. Her debut novel, Love is a Rebellious Bird, is no exception—her first to be published with She Writes Press.

Elayne grew up in Chicago. She went to university and graduate school in the Midwest—Ohio State University and the University of Michigan—where she earned a Masters of Public Health and a PhD in Psychology. For several years she lived in Barbados, West Indies, working as a health care consultant with Project Hope; then returning as a writer and columnist for the Barbados Daily Nation.

Her professional career has largely been in academia at San Jose State University, with her research and clinical area of expertise being the severely mentally ill. A recent transplant to the Santa Ynez Valley, near Santa Barbara, California, she is a popular lifestyle newspaper columnist there. Elayne has appeared on San Francisco public television as a restaurant critic.

She’s been awarded several writer’s residencies, including Hedgebrook Writers' Colony on Whidbey Island, Washington and Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, California.

She daily walks her young dachshund and aged fluffy white rescue through nearby vineyards. Married to David, a scientist, they have five children between them, all grown. ~ Author's website

Connect with Elayne

Website | Instragram | Goodreads | Amazon

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It's Monday! What Are You Reading? November 11, 2019

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week. It's an opportunity to visit other blogs and to comment on their reads. And ... you can add to that ever growing TBR pile! So welcome everyone. This meme started with J Kaye's Blog and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at the Book Date. And here we are!

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Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all have a good week. Happy reading!

What I'm currently reading

Love is a Rebellious Bird
by Elayne Klasson
Pub date 11/12
My thoughts will be posted tomorrow.

Dead Before Dying: A Shadow Valley Manor Novel
(Shadow Valley Manor #1)
by Kerry Schafer
Narrated by Teri Clark Linden

What I recently finished

This Tender Land

by William Kent Krueger
Loved this story!

And.... I got to meet Kent!

The Perfect Hope
(Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy #3)
by Nora Roberts
Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

What I am going to read next

Keeping Lucy
by T. Greenwood

I really love my reading life!

What are you reading this week?

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