Ideas for Your 2010 (music & books I fell in love with during 2009!)

If you're fortunate, you've already experienced the talents of these authors and musicians that occupied my brain space during '09....and if you haven't, you have something to look forward to!

These are my favorite discoveries of 2009...

The novels of Marisa de los Santos . Love Walked In and Belong to Me are heartwarming, unique stories of families...Marisa does an amazing job with her characters. They're genuine, real people -- people I'd love to know in real life.

I read sixteen novels by Elizabeth Berg this year. Sixteen. You can safely assume that she's amazing. Her novels are full of life -- family, friendship, the art of appreciating the small moments of a day. I'm in the middle of her book of writing advice, called Escape into the Open: the Art of Writing True. If you have any inclination to write, it's a must-read. It's friendly and encouraging -- and contains great writing exercises.

Sing Them Home, by Stephanie Kallos, is a novel about missing people. It's about how absences affect us, how our heritage affects us...it's beautiful, really. I can't wait to read her other novel, Broken for You. It's on my list for the new year!

I'm not usually a sci-fi reader, but a friend recommended the John Twelve Hawks Traveler series and I was hooked after the first couple of pages...these novels are fast-paced, action-packed, and thought provoking. They make you step back, look at the world, and go -- whoa. There's a grid and we're all on it. It also opens up that realm of parallel-world kind of stuff, which is always fun.

My last stand-out suggestion, even though I can add more if anyone's interested, is Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry. It's creepy and a little twisted -- the perfect historical/haunted/rainy October kind of book...


And as for music...I've always been a Bethany Joy Galeotti fan and she's part of a group called Everly...they haven't released a full album yet, but I'm eagerly anticipating it...check them out! And, um, this one!


Happy reading!