Tag Archives: romance

The Monday Book – Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

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Guest review by Janelle Bailey, avid reader/ever-an-educator/lifelong learner…and also now 7th grade teacher and part-time bookseller

Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

Though not new (2015 publication), this book’s themes are classic: family and relationships and love and commitment, as well as vineyards and winemaking are all complex and hard work…heart work.

Georgia and Ben are to be married very soon and at her home, her family’s vineyard, about 500 miles away from where they now live. But a pretty big secret prompts Georgia to flee there sooner, only to find things a bit of a mess there as well.

It’s a tangled web they all–we all??–weave and live, and in the de-tangling of this one, relationships are questioned and their truths revealed, painful in processing. And due to the family vineyard and winemaking business, a reader learns much about that as well. Subtle connections between the complexities of grape growing, and even the soil mattering, to “growing” a family and building relationships mattering from the ground up were also detected by this reader. Knowing the history and building the “story” of it matter to both. Living through the tough times and persevering matter, too.

I enjoyed the visit to The Last Straw, the family vineyard established in 1979. For this reader who happens to appreciate as favorite beverages, water, tea, and wine, learning how important the first two are to making the third well at this vineyard was additional and educational enjoyment.

And I appreciated the focus, also, on synchronization, simultaneity, rhythm…and how little we understand as it’s happening why things are exactly as they are but seemingly are…as they are to be.

I say read it! I think you’ll be pleased that you did.

Love, Cancer, Gas Money

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February is short and cold and pushes the hearts-n-cupids love agenda–probably to keep us all from killing each other, given its dark icy muddiness.

Maybe the only thing worse than February by itself is February when you or someone you love is sick, and frightened. That’s why the bookshop is helping out Mountain Laurel Cancer Coalition. Mt. Laurel runs the Ruben Lovell Memorial Fund–named in honor of a lad whose personal fight ended in leaving us. The fund offers gas cards in the amounts of $35 and $50 to people who have to travel for chemo or diagnosis.

We all know that cancer is a curse visited more on SW VA than most places, and you can argue tobacco, mine runoff, lifestyle and the rest until the chickens leave their roosts in search of safer ones, but the fact remains that we have a LOT of people in the area who don’t have insurance but do have the big C.

They should be able to get the care they need to get better or die with comfort and dignity. Mt. Laurel’s Lovell fund has been seeing to that, quietly and competently, for several years now under the direction of Leigh Ann Bolinskey (nee Kennedy; yeah, she’s a hometown girl). And in 2012, their card requests went from about 200 to 300. And they didn’t have the money. So now they’re roughly $1000 down.

Tales of the Lonesome Pine (and a whole lot of other community members in this region) would like to see that go the other way. So for the month of February, when you buy romances from the LUV SHACK here, we will donate 100% of the purchase price to the Lovell fund. Romances are 50 cents paperback, 3 for $1, value boxes for $5. Hardbacks $2. With any luck, we can empty the shed of its 3,000 or so tomes and fill the coffers of Mt. Laurel Cancer Coalition’s Lovell fund. That’s what we’d all call a win-win.

It’s also what we’d call real love, and maybe a little light dawning in the cold scary dark.