Day 175: The Week in Review August 31 - September 6, 2020

Chatting Books Online Day 175.  The Week In Review August 31 - Sept 6, 2020.  You ever want to bring just how fast a week goes by to your own attention?  Just try writing a book review a day with a weekly wrap-up on Sundays!  Every time I go to write the week in review I think I must be Rip Van Winkle and have slept through the week because I swear it seems like I just wrote a week in review yesterday.

All of that is neither here nor there, what is important is that today is Sunday so it is time to wrap up the week and get ready for another week of recommendations next week. 

This week several new books including : Pete the Cat Crayons Rock, Lifelike Creatures by Rebecca Baum, and Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen.  We also talked about a couple of books from our "bookshop lovers" shelf including : The Literary Pocket Puzzle Book, and Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores.  Towards the end of the week I recommended Julia Reed's New Orleans a beautiful book by an author taken too soon from our world.

If you missed any of these reviews and want to read what I had to say about them you can see all of our Chatting Books Online picks by visiting our website at: http://www.conundrumbooks.com/chatting-books-online . 

We still (and always will going forward) offer shipping if you cannot make it to the store.   Or just stop by the shop Monday - Saturday between 10:30am and 4pm  or on Sunday's between 11am - 3pm.

Day 174: Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores

Chatting Books Online Day 174.  Today's recommended book is a favorite of all those "I love a bookstore" folks that come into the store.  It is "Footnotes* from the World's Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers" by Bob Eckstein.  It combines beautiful watercolors of bookshops from around the world with a bit of information and a vignet about eac one in a lovely format.  Whether it is a story about an artist walking into a bookstore and rearranging all the books by color to present art by book or the story of Anne Rice arriving at a New Orleans bookstore in a horse drawn hearse behind a jazz funeral procession the stories are sure to delight as much as the paintings. 

The only negative things I can say about this delightful book is that I cannot figure out the order (not alpha, not by area as far as I can tell etc but there is a Table of Contents so it's OK), and the fact that we were not included.  In fairness it was published only months after we opened almost 5 years ago so I like to think that is the only reason for the ommission!

This Hardcover book is 175 pages and sells for $22 a copy.

To purchase a copy of this book come see us Mondays - Saturdays between 10:30am and 4pm at the shop, or you can message me and we can ship a copy directly to you.  Take Care,  Mask Up, and Visit a Bookstore  !

Day 173: Julia Reed's New Orleans

Chatting Books Online Day 173.  Today's recommended book Julia Reed's New Orleans celebrates not only the food and fun of our favorite city but I am also choosing it today to celebrate the life of author Julia Red who we lost too soon almost a week ago.  This beautiful book was just published in 2019.  It gives full, lush pictures of several parties with friends in and around  New Orleans while also giving lavish descriptions of the parties and their settings as well as all of the fabulous recipes. 

As the subtitle says this is a book intended to show" Food, Fun, and Field Trips for Letting The Good Times Roll".  How perfect could that be ?  It gives everything from festival foods (crawfish and strawberries) to a Mardi Gras Brunch. a St Patrick's Day unch, and even an Aoili Dinner along Italian Feast, and The Classics among several others. 

Do you need the recipe for Peter Patout's Famous Satsumacello (of course  you do).  A description of how to make the perfect Tapenade?  Why, Yes! A recipe for a fantastic seafood gumbo , and one for potato salad in case that is the way you roll.  How about Judy's Fried Eggplant with Galatoire's "Table " Sauce - my mouth is watering.   And So Many More . 

I hope you celebrate both your life and  Julia's with foods from her fabulous books today. 

This beautiful hardcover book has 223 pages and sells for $ 50.00 a copy .

To purchase a copy of this book come see us Mondays - Saturdays between 10:30am and 4pm at the shop, or you can message me and we can ship a copy directly to you.  Take Care,  Mask Up, and Let the Good Times Roll  !

Day 172: The Literary Pocket Puzzle Book

Chatting Books Online Day 172. Today's recommended book is The Literary Pocket Puzzle book: 120 Classic CONUNDRUMS for Book Lovers by Neil Somerville.

Let's be honest, I first ordered this book several years ago because we are a Book and Puzzle Shop named The Conundrum and it is a Book of Puzzles with CONUNDRUM in the title. Darn good reason, if you ask me ! But actually it is even more fun than that because each puzzle is book themed, so there are Harry Potter themed crosswords, Jane Austen themed sudoku, Charles Dickens Character names om a Word - Search , you get the picture. And it is pocket sized so you can throw it in your handbag or back pocket and when you find yourself waiting in the interminably long lines outside of a store waiting for your turn to socially distance shop, or getting an oil change, waiting at an appointment, whatever.

This truly pocket-sized book is just 6 inches by 4 inches and sells for $9.99 a copy.

To purchase a copy of this book come see us Mondays - Saturdays between 10:30am and 4pm at the shop, or you can message me and we can ship a copy directly to you. Take Care, Mask Up, and Enjoy the Conundrum !

Day 171: Lifelike Creatures

Chatting Books Online Day 171. This is unusual for me but I am going to recommend a book to you today that you can pre-order today but won’t actually be released until Sept 17,2020 .

Today's recommended book is the debut novel by Rebecca Baum: Lifelike Creatures.

This book tells the story of a small bayou town in Louisiana and what happens when a sinkhole suddenly opens above a salt dome that an oil company has been using as storage. There are characters that are heroic and characters that are seriously flawed and the one thing that is sure is that these people are so realistically and fully drawn that no character fits neatly into either character . As in real life you cannot predict the outcome of this one until you get there and even then you know the characters still have a road ahead of them. A fully satisfying read I will certainly look forward to other books from this Louisiana-born author.

Pre-order this book today to be sure you get one on release day : http://www.conundrumbooks.com/shop/lifelikecreatures

The shop is open Mondays - Saturdays between 10:00am and 4pm, or you can message me and we can ship any book directly to you. Take Care, Mask Up, and Keep on Reading!

Day 170 : Squeeze Me

Chatting Books Online Day 170.  Today's recommended book is Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen. 

Carl Hiaasen is at it again cracking us up with the wild goings on in south Florida.  This book, which was obviously written recently, combines swanky galas in the Palm Beach area, a tanning bed obsessed, overweight President running for re-election during a pandemic shut down (crystal hand sanitizer dispensers at the doors of the winter white house etc) , pythons, secret service agents, immigration protestors, missing jewels, a young and attractive wildlife wrangler with an interesting past , and it even has a reappearance from two of the zaniest characters from previous Hiaasen novels.

And that's all I'm going to tell you because I don't want to spoil the fun for you when you read (or listen) to it for yourself. 

I mention listening because that is how I enjoyed this book.  I used my https://www.libro.fm/conundrumbooks account to download and listen to this book just as soon as it came out last week and could not wait to get back in the car each day to hear more.  We do , of course, also have it available in store in hardcover for $28.95 a copy.

For anyone who hasn't tried audio books yet, or maybe you tried another audio book company in the past, let me tell you a bit about this great service through Libro.  You can either subscribe for just $14.99 a month which gets you a credit good for one audiobook a month (a bargain , this book for instance costs $31.50 to download without a subscription) .  If you want to listen to a second, or third, or fourth etc book in a month you get a 30% discount on additional books.    I have found audiobooks to be an unexpected and joyful addition to my life.  It was not something I thought I would be interested in , being pretty much a book held in the hand snob, until now.  I first tried audiobooks just to try it out before offering it to our customers but now find it to be a integral part of my every day "reading" experience.

To purchase a copy of this book come see us Mondays - Saturdays between 10:30am and 4pm at the shop, or you can message me and we can ship a copy directly to you.  Take Care,  Mask Up, and Keep on Laughing  !

Day 169: Pete the Cat : Crayons Rock

Chatting Books Online Day 169.  Our friend Pete the Cat is back with a brand new book : Pete the Cat: Crayons Rock.  In this fun and technicolor storybook Pete shows us that Art doesn't always have to be just right, art is groovy because it comes from the heart!

This brand new hardcover storybook comes out tomorrow on Tuesday  Sept 1, 2020 and sells for $18.99 a copy.  Reserve yours now!

To purchase a copy of this book come see us Mondays - Saturdays between 10:30am and 4pm at the shop, or you can message me and we can ship a copy directly to you.  Take Care,  Mask Up, and Rock On !

Day 168: The Week in Review August 24-30, 2020

Chatting Books Online Day 168. The Week in Review August 24-30, 2020. This week we Popped Up (Alice In Wonderland pop-up adventure ) , Popped Out (Pride and Prejudice Paper Dolls), and provided a Pop Of Color (Color me Floral). We also took a look at reprint of botanical prints originally done 100 years ago ( The Book of Wild Flowers), read a poignant memoir while also learning about beekeeping and Big Sur - and Bee Keeping in Big Sur ( The Honey Bus) , and finally took a drive up the road to visit our friends in Natchez while chatting about the new book being released Tuesday : The Deepest South of All : True Stories from Natchez Mississippi.

If you missed any of these reviews and want to read what I had to say about them you can see all of our Chatting Books Online picks by visiting our website at: http://www.conundrumbooks.com/chatting-books-online .

We still (and always will going forward) offer shipping if you cannot make it to the store. Or just stop by the shop Monday - Saturday between 10:30am and 4pm and Sundays 11-3pm. That's right, we are now open on Sundays again!