6 Tips for Finding Time to Read With A Baby

Finding time to read with a new baby . . . is impossible!

Just kidding! You came for tips and I'm bound and determined to give them to you! I'm usually an avid reader. Most of the time I fly through about 40-50 books a year. But the years I've had a new baby, that number has dropped dramatically. But let's be real! That's totally fine and expected. I'm a big believer that there are seasons of life and that things go in an out of importance depending on the stage of life you're in. 

I have a five month old, a four year old, three teenagers, a husband, a dog and a cat--so life at my house is pretty crazy! There's always something going and someone always needs something. It's LIFE and it seems like it slips away in both slow motion and fast forward. You definitely don't want to miss out on quality time with your kiddos. But it's also important to fill your own bucket so that you can be the best woman you can be! 

First off, if you're in a Reading Slump, check out our tips to get through it HERE.

Book Club Ideas for "Remembrandt" {by Robin King}

Our very own book club member Robin King wrote her first book and Brooke did such a great job putting this book club night together. We all had such a great time discussing, socializing and dressing up for this book club night.

Book Review for "Remembrant" {by Robin King}

Delicious Reads Book Review 

of Remembrandt

TITLE: Remembrant 

AUTHOR: Robin King

NUMBER OF PAGES: 203

YEAR PUBLISHED: 2014

PUBLISHER: Walnut Springs Press

READING LEVEL:

GENRE: YA, Suspense, Romance 

SUMMARY: Alexandra Stewart doesn't just walk down memory lane, she lives on it. Her eidetic memory records her experiences and plays them back, DVD style. It's great when she wants to ace a test, but not so great when she topples over a cute boy in the hallway and the humiliation plays back over and over and over . . . Brown University seems like the perfect place for the seventeen-year-old to forget her past. Hope for a normal life comes in the form of a handsome new running partner who makes her heart race and body perspire even before she laces up her shoes. 

Looks From Books: Remembrandt by Robin King

This month in Delicious Reads we read Remembrandt, a novel by one of our very own book club members, the lovely and incredibly talented, Robin King. 

Robin is an accomplished author, mother of 5, wife and a wonderful friend. She is funny, vibrant and amazing - just like this novel. 

NaNoWriMo Makes New York Times Bestsellers

So You Want to be a Writer? Or maybe you're just curious about how some authors write their books so quickly. Or maybe you've heard whispers of this crazy thing called NaNoWriMo and you want in?

Did you know bestseller Erin Morgestern wrote The Night Circus during NaNoWriMo in 2012? I bet you didn't know that Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins or Cinder by Marissa Meyer or Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen were were also NaNoWriMo books.

NaNoWriMo Novels that Became Bestsellers! Bet you have read least one of these.

In fact,you probably didn't even know what NaNoWriMo is! Or how to pronounce it, for that matter. So I'm going to give you the inside scoop.

NaNoWriMo (pronounced: Na-No-Rye-Mo) stands for National Novel Writing Month and takes place every year during the month of November. Writers from around the world make a goal to write 50,000 words of a new novel during that month. You only have 30 days and you have to finish by November 30th at midnight to be a winner.

What do you win? Well, the biggest thing is, HELLO, your novel! The next thing is the the envy of your friends and colleagues when you tell them you WROTE A BOOK. And third, the knowledge that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. There are a few minor prizes and a cool certificate, but, let's be honest, having written 50,000 words of a novel should be honor enough.

NaNoWriMo.org describes the month as "a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing." It's not just for adult's either! Of the 400,000 estimated participants this year, nearly 1/4 of them (100,000) will be teens or younger. NaNoWriMo holds classes, write-ins, and sends out email pep talks by published authors, including Veronica Roth, Jim Butcher, and Tamora Pierce.

This year, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is celebrating its 16th year of empowering diverse voices, supporting writers in the classroom, and building creative ­writing communities around the world.

The theme this year is writing "Your Boundless Novel," with gorgeous design from Simon &
Schuster children's book designer Elizabeth Doyle.

Want to participate? Start brainstorming because, come next November, you could be on your way to becoming a New York Times best seller.

XoXo,

Robin King

Author of Teen Romantic Suspense Novel, Remembrandt

**Two Time Winner of NaNoWriMo**

P.S. I still have 8,500 words to write in 3 days to win this year (my 3rd time). Wish me luck!

Our 2015 Book Picks!

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

Time to chose books for 2015!

This year at our first ever book club retreat we sat down in our pajamas to start the process of choosing twelve books that we would like to read and host book clubs for next year. When we select our books, we do our best to mix us the genres so we get a little taste of everything.

This year we choose:

-2 Classics

-1 Non Fiction

-4 Young Adult

-1 Historical Fiction

-1 Autobiography

-3 Fiction

Take a peek at the 12 books we carefully chose for our 2015 line up and read why we picked them. And as always, we hope you will read along with us!

January

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We didn't hesitate for a second to read this book because it is written by our very own, ROBIN KING!
Robin has been a Delicious Reads members from the beginning and just published her first book, REMEMBRANDT which has been getting great reviews and we are very proud to call her ours. 

SYNOPSIS: Alexandra starts a new semester at college, hoping to escape her painful memories—a nearly impossible task with her eidetic memory replaying everything in movie-esque detail. Things aren't always what they seem: her handsome running partner shows up when she least expects it, her Russian professor is anything but ordinary and Brown University holds a well-kept secret. 

February

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When we discussed what autobiography we wanted to read I mentioned MY LIFE IN FRANCE . Immediately the other members jumped at the idea of reading a book about someone who loves food as much as we do! I'm certain this book club meeting will be brimming with deliciousness!

SYNOPSIS: Julia’s unforgettable story – struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took them across the globe – unfolds with the spirit so key to her success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of the most endearing American personalities of the last fifty years.

 March

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When we Skyped with author Leigh Bardugo this fall, we asked her for some of her favorite book recommendations. She was the one who told us to read CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL last year and we all LOVED that book so when she mentioned we should tread THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY we choose it without another thought.

SYNOPSIS: Erik Larson—author of #1 bestseller In the Garden of Beasts—intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

April

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We were almost done choosing our books for 2015 when I realized we hadn't chosen a traditional "Classic" which I personally love to read. We wanted to pick something different than the usual classic when one member suggested we pick one of Jules Verne's fantastic tales,  20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA was chosen.

SYNOPSIS: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1870. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus, as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax after he, his servant Conseil, and Canadian harpoonist Ned Land wash up on their ship. On the Nautilus, the three embark on a journey which has them going all around the world.

 May

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This new YA book has been creating a lot of buzz with it's controversial topics of gender and identity and we are all excited to see what kind of a discussion we'll have! REMAKE is a little bit Science fiction, a little bit romance and a little bit action and sure to be a great book club book.

SYNOPSIS: A World Where Freedom Isn't a Choice
Nine is the ninth female born in her batch of ten females and ten males. By design, her life in Freedom Province is without complications or consequences. However, such freedom comes with a price. the Prime Maker is determined to keep that price a secret from the new batches of citizens that are born, nurtured, and raised androgynously.

June

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We've heard so many wonderful things about STATION ELEVEN from publishers, from reviewers, from readers and from one of our favorite authors, Erin Morgenstern, We decided it was a no-brainer and added it to our list immediately.

SYNOPSIS: An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty.

July

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We've never chosen to read a Middle Grader book for book club before but we made an exception for this charming and beautiful book. I read WONDER earlier this year and was touched by it's message and main characters August who has found a cozy spot in my heart so make room because he will find a spot in yours as well if you read it.

SYNOPSIS: August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get past Auggie’s extraordinary face. Auggie is a hero to root for, a diamond in the rough who proves that you can’t blend in when you were born to stand out.

August

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Originally we had scheduled to read THE THIRTEENTH TALE this November but we bumped it to next year when local author Teri Harman came and speak to us at our retreat instead. BUT, we did not want to miss out on reading this intriguing and suspenseful tale so we made sure to add it to our 2015 list.

SYNOPSIS: Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings. She is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

September

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We had SO much fun reading Agatha Christie's "AND THEN THERE WERE NONE" last year that we decided to read one of Christie's other classics, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. 
If you love a good murder mystery the you'll love Christie's books and they make for a great book club discussion.

SYNOPSIS: Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer.
Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man's enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again . . .



October

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When we were discussing what book we wanted to read during October I thought of SHUTTER because every now and then it's nice to read a book that makes you want to crawl under the blankets and hide. ;) This YA horror should scare us just enough without crossing over into Stephen King territory of giving us nightmares for months! (IT ruined me for a year!)

SYNOPSIS: Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat -- a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain. As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn't exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she's faced before . . . or die trying.

November

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I can't believe I'm admitting this to you all but I've NEVER read an of the Narnia books!
There, I said it, judge me all you want but we all have book regrets!
When I admitted my "book sin" to the group we all agreed that reading THE LION, THE WITCH, and the WARDROBE for Christmas would be perfect AND remedy my never having never read this Ya classic.

SYNOPSIS: Four adventurous siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie—step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia, a land frozen in eternal winter and enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, signals a great change . . . and a great sacrifice. Open the door and enter a new world.

December

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Who doesn't love a sweeping tale of romance full of charm and intrigue??
We wanted to kick off 2016 discussing a book we knew we would all like and EDENBROOKE will not disappoint us I'm certain.

SYNOPSIS: Marianne Daventry will do anything to escape the boredom of Bath and the amorous attentions of an unwanted suitor. So when an invitation arrives from her twin sister, Cecily, to join her at a sprawling country estate, she jumps at the chance. Thinking she'll be able to relax and enjoy her beloved English countryside while her sister snags the handsome heir of Edenbrooke, Marianne finds that even the best laid plans can go awry. From a terrifying run-in with a highwayman to a seemingly harmless flirtation, Marianne finds herself embroiled in an unexpected adventure filled with enough romance and intrigue to keep her mind racing.