Don’t forget to enter my giveaway for a paperback copy of The Wednesday Sisters!

Recently, Shelf Awareness mentioned an article on the website 24/7 Wall Street, “Twelve Brands That Will Disappear by End of 2010“. Unfortunately, Borders Books is on their list.

Click through the read all of the predicted casualties, but here’s the blurb for Borders:

Borders (BGP) has struggled for several years as the No.2 operator of book store behind Barnes & Noble. When Border’s released its last set of earnings it said it would cut the number of Waldendbooks stores from about 300 to 50 or 60. With Border’s losses, that won’t be enough. The pressure from online book operations led by Amazon (AMZN) and new e-book readers is overwhelming Borders. In the fourth quarter of last year, sales at Border’s branded stores dropped 15.3%. For the full year 2008, Borders lost $157 million on revenue of $2.8 billion. Borders recently extended its $42.5 million senior secured term loan with Pershing Square Capital Management, moving the due date to April 1, 2010. That may be the day that Borders goes away. Border’s shares trade at $1.47, down from a 52-week high of $8.02.

I know Border’s has been struggling, but I didn’t think anyone would project they would go away! This projection saddens me for a number of reasons:

• I love Borders. I don’t like how Barnes & Noble has their stores set up, so I don’t like shopping there.
• I’m nervous about what this would do to the publishing industry, who sell a large amount of books to the big chains. I assume that Barnes & Noble could take up any slack, as will all independent book stores, but that still doesn’t change the fact that a large purchaser of books is knocking on death’s door.
• Where will groups, such as the knitting group I’m in, move to? Borders is very open to having groups meet at their stores, and all those groups will be displaced.

In the past year, I’ve bought fewer and fewer books at Borders, choosing instead to purchase from local independent bookstores. So while this possibility of Border’s closing makes me very melancholy, I’m excited for what this could mean for independent bookstores. 

• Would independent bookstores make a comeback if Border’s folded?
• Will independent bookstores become the bookstore standard, with knowledgeable staff and handpicked inventory?

I’ve never imagined what life would be like without Borders, but I think it would probably be good for society to have to go back to the independent bookstores. If I had to choose, I’d rather the store that was on life support was Barnes & Noble, but somewhere in my life someone forgot to name me God over the book world, so Borders it is.

The Secret of the Sacred Scarab  by Fiona Ingram is a middle grade fiction book that reminded me why I fell in love with reading in the first place.

When I was young, I read a lot of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. Those books feature teenagers (the Hardy boys and Nancy Drew, dur) invariably finding themselves engrossed in something mysterious. There’s pretty clear good guys and bad guys, with a surprise character not being bad or not being good, and usually some plot twists. They were so much fun!

The Secret of the Sacred Scarab  has so much fun in it! Justin and Adam, cousins, travel with their archaeologist aunt to Egypt to go site seeing. Trouble follows these boys around on their vacation, starting with when a street peddler surreptitiously slips a scarab into Adam’s pocket. Dr. Khalid, the evil guy who causes most of Adam and Justin’s trouble, knows Adam and Justin must have the scarab and he will stop at nothing to take it from them. The boys use various tricks and slipperiness to avoid Dr. Khalid, sometimes resulting in hilarious situations!

The author has a great writing style, and she has a great sense of humor that shines through her writing. I think it’s a great testament to an author’s writing when the interest can be held of readers outside of the targeted audience. Ms. Ingram held my attention and made me reminisce about books that I read many years ago.

If I had a child around age 9, up until age 13 or 14, I would thrust this book into their hands and encourage them to read it. It’s books like this that spark a love of reading.

Rating: 90 out of 100

Buy the book from Powell’s | Buy the book from Amazon

Edited to add: The winner of The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton is Nan from Nan’s Corner of the Web! Congratulations, Nan!

I’m so excited! The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton is being released today (May 5, 2009) in paperback! *lots of cheering and clapping and general excitement*

This was hands down in my top three books of last year. It’s even one that I know I’ll re-read, which I generally swear is not a good idea.

It has been such a pleasure and a gift to get to know Meg. I got to meet her shortly after I read the book, and really, it was amazing. She has one of my favorite author blogs where she asks authors to guest post about their journey to publishing their first book. She gets some great authors to guest post and I’m always curious who will be up next.

I can’t wait to see what book she publishes next!

To celebrate the release of The Wednesday Sisters in paperback, I’m giving away a paperback copy! All you have to do is tell me who your best/closest friend is. If you want an extra entry, you can tweet, facebook, stumble, whatever, just come back and leave a separate comment for each entry. I’m not tallying up entries anymore! Lesson has been learned! Contest will be open until May 15, 2009 at 11:59pm.

I am reposting my original review below. Really, if you haven’t read this book, it’s a definite must read.

I received The Wednesday Sisters from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers. It’s kind of a crap shoot as far what you get, let alone whether you get a book at all. I wasn’t expecting too much with this book because I wasn’t sure if it was going to be on the chick lit side (chick lit is not my cuppa tea), but if I’d known what an awesome book it would be, I would have dropped everything and picked it up the second it hit my mailbox.

My run-on sentence synopsis: The Wednesday Sisters is about five women who first meet at a local park because four of them have kids so it makes sense why they were at the park and then decide after about a month of meeting on Wednesday mornings that they would start writing together, though some of the ladies were reluctant to write, and it’s about their writing and their lives and the ups and downs and the good and bad and anything in between.

I LOVED THIS BOOK.

When I picked up the book, I felt, not like I was reading, but like I was sitting down with a friend and she was telling me a story. I felt so comfortable and I felt so privileged to be taken into her confidence. But the novel doesn’t read like the author was trying to do that…it’s so effortless that I wouldn’t be surprised if the author had written ten books prior to this one.

Oftentimes when books have too many characters, certain characters get pushed to the wayside to make way for the story of the main character(s). The author is able to tell the story of all five women without me feeling like she’s leaving anything out or pushing any characters to the side. I was always satisfied with the amount of information she gave me about each person. Her style in this regard reminds me of John Steinbeck. Meg Waite Clayton tells you stories about each person, allowing those stories to reveal their character.

What was best about this book? The author was able to make me laugh and cry at the exact same time. I found myself laughing and crying every time I picked up the book. I was always crying because I was so touched by the characters and what they were experiencing, and I was laughing as the author pulled the humor out of the situations in a delicate and gentle manner. Their happiness, pain, sadness, hope, were all so raw and apparent that I couldn’t help but feel connected to the characters. Even when I saw how a scene was going to play out, the author was still able to make me laugh out loud.

The Wednesday Sisters is not about any crazy shenanigans they get themselves in to. It’s about their lives; one battles infertility, one struggles with a cheating husband, one is blunt and outspoken to a fault, none of them are perfect, none of them have perfect lives or perfect husbands. They are real. They are you and me.

If I could be granted a wish, I would like to write like Meg Waite Clayton.

I think I may tell Dave the wedding’s off and I want to marry The Wednesday Sisters.

Rating: 99 out of 100

You can check out the author’s website here.

Other reviews:

S. Krishna’s Books

Book Addiction

Reading Derby

Jenny’s Books

B&b ex libris

I Smell Books

Library Queue

lit*chick

The Written Word

She Reads and Reads

Leafing Through Life

Breaking the Spine

Booking Mama

caribousmom

Lesley’s Book Nook

Educating Petunia

Lisa’s Book Critiques