Palmer's Page Turners

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and The Bookish. This week's theme is Top Ten Goals/Resolutions for 2015. These can be bookish, blog related, or anything else. Here's my list!!

1.  Read 90 books. This year, my goal was 70. I finished with 86. So clearly I beat my goal! Upping it a little bit more to 90 books for 2015.

2. Participate in as many reading challenges as possible. The main reason for this is that it's a fun way to connect with other bloggers! I met some super awesome people from participating in reading challenges in 2014, and I look forward to more fun in 2015!

3. Continue blogging! Goal is to post 2-3 times a week. I started my blog March 31, 2014 and am super excited to start my second year of consistent writing and blogging.

4. Write more. One of my life goals is to write a book. You can't write a book if you don't regularly write!

5. Participate in the A-Z blog challenge in April.  This will help me with Goal #4. Need to start think…

This is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey.

I had all last week off from work, but unfortunately didn't get as much reading done as I would've liked! Lots of family obligations and Christmas activities. I did manage to get halfway through the current book I'm reading (and it's a long one) so I am happy with that progress! My books "On Deck" I'm saving for the Bout of Books next week!

Recently Finished: (see my review here)
Currently Reading: On Deck:

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and The Bookish. This week's theme is Top Ten Books I Wouldn't Mind Santa Brining This Year. What a fun theme! Here we go!

1. Anything and everything by Colleen Hoover.... she is amazing!

2. After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

3. Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

4. One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

5. A Second Bite at the Apple by Dana Bate

6. Another Night, Another Day by Sarah Rayner

7. The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane by Kelly Harms

8. Hello from the Gillespies by Monica McInerney

9.  Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris by Ann Mah

10. Any Rainbow Rowell book (except Landline, which I already have)

What books would you like Santa to bring you this year?

Happy Reading!

Title: Me Before You
Author: Jojo Moyes
369 pages, published December 2012
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Source: purchased for my Kindle

From GoodReads:

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.  What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

My Review: 

I was excited to read this book because I'd heard so many good things about it! This was my first time reading one of Jojo Moyes…

Title: The French for Christmas
Author: Fiona Valpy
304 pages, published October 2014
Genre: Holiday, Women's Fiction

I received this ebook from Netgalley. This is my honest review.

From GoodReads:
Evie used to LOVE Christmas, but this year she can’t wait for the tinsel and presents to be a distant memory.

When her best friends offer the use of their cottage in the beautiful French countryside, Evie jumps at the chance. With her soon-to-be-ex-husband, celebrity chef Will Brooke, plastered over the news with his latest ‘love interest’, leaving the country seems like the perfect plan.

Armed with her French grandmother’s tattered notebook of recipes, Evie is determined to ignore Christmas altogether and bake herself back to happiness.

And when Evie meets her next-door neighbour – the très gorgeous doctor Didier she finds a very willing taste-tester. But is it possible that he could be interested in more than just her Tarte Tatin?

With snow falling, a special Réveillon dinner a…

I'm so excited to be participating in Bout of Books 12, my third Bout of Books experience!! I had a fantastic time with Bout of Books 10 and 11, and can't wait for the fun that Bout of Books 12 will bring!! Here's some information about Bout of Books 12 from the official site:

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 5th and runs through Sunday, January 11th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 12 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

I will set my goals for Bout of Books when the event gets closer. My main goal is to …

Title: The Boston Girl
Author: Anita Diamant
256 pages, published December 9, 2014
Genre: Historical Fiction

I received this ebook from Netgalley. This is my honest review.

From GoodReads:
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable coming-of-age novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.

Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine - a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.

Eighty-five-year-old …

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and The Bookish. This week's theme is Top Ten New to Me Authors in 2014. I'm really excited about this topic because I've discovered some great new authors in 2014!

1. J.K. Rowling : I know, it's so sad that I've just now discovered the wonderfulness of Harry Potter just this year.  But on the upside: I LOVED the series. It was a fantastic summer reading project!

2. Colleen Hoover: one of my FAVORITE new authors!! I read Maybe, Someday and Ugly Love this year and fell in love with both books. I cannot wait for future CoHo reads!!

3. Sarah Jio: another one of my new favorites!! Her books are so creative and interesting, and I love that the ones I've read (Goodnight June, Blackberry Winter, and The Look of Love) have all bet set in Seattle!

4. Rainbow Rowell: I read all four of her books this year, and my favorite is definitely Eleanor and Park. RR is absolutely brilliant. Along with CoHo and Jio, RR has made my &…

Title: The Look of Love
Author: Sarah Jio
320 pages, published November 2014
Genre: Women's Fiction
Source: Purchased for myself

From GoodReads:

Born during a Christmas blizzard, Jane Williams receives a rare gift: the ability to see true love. Jane has emerged from an ailing childhood a lonely, hopeless romantic when, on her twenty-ninth birthday, a mysterious greeting card arrives, specifying that Jane must identify the six types of love before the full moon following her thirtieth birthday, or face grave consequences. When Jane falls for a science writer who doesn’t believe in love, she fears that her fate is sealed. Inspired by the classic song, The Look of Love is utterly enchanting.

My Review:

I've read several of Jio's books this year, and she's become one of my favorite authors. I preordered this book and was excited to receive it in the mail the day it came out.  What I loved about this book was how creative the plot was. However farfetched the concept of your …

In yesterday's blog post, I discussed my work with the This I Believe project. As promised, here is my own This I Believe essay, entitled, "Books: Never Leave Home Without Them."


Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a fascination with books.I was fortunate to have parents who read to me on a regular basis. Bedtime each night meant reading a chapter or two from the current book Mom and I were reading together—the Little House on the Prairie series and the Anne of Green Gables series were some of my favorites. One of my favorite stories my mom has told me about my childhood was how even as a toddler I was enthralled by books—after unwrapping one at Christmas I would immediately sit down to read and ignore any and all other presents from that moment on.
Our weekly library day at school was my absolute favorite day of the week, and one of my favorite events of the year was the Battle of the Books—a team trivia competition based off of a selection of children’s and young adult …

For the last six years, I've been teaching a First Year Experience course at the university where I work.  In class we address topics such as time management, study skills, and campus resources. Each year, we also do a project, and this years' project is one of my favorites so far.  The project is based off the book and NPR series, "This I Believe."

From Goodreads:

Based on the National Public Radio series of the same name, This I Believe features eighty essayists--from the famous to the unknown--completing the thought that begins the book's title. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others.

Featuring a well-known list of contributors--including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates, and John Updike--the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk from R…