20 Mother's Day Gift Ideas For Your Book Lover

In collaboration with Delicious Reads, I put together this list to delight that book lovin' mom of yours!

Mother's Day is just a week away. If you're like me, you've probably been thinking about getting that literary mom of yours a thoughtful gift to show her how much you love her.  You've probably even realized that the $10 potted plant staring at you as you walk into Walmart probably won't cut it as the kind of unique present your mom deserves. What do you get the wonderful woman who seems to always know what to get you? Look no further! Check out these creative gifts that are bound to bring a smile to her eye and, dare I say, maybe a tear drop or two of delight.

20 Mother's Day Gift Ideas for the Book Lover:

1. Personal Library Book Embosser - For a bibliophile, there's no greater pleasure than sharing beloved books, but no crueler pain than losing them for good. Press your personalized embossing stamp to all your books to make sure they make it home. 

2. Bathtub Caddy with Reading Rack - Perfect for an evening bubble bath with a good book for complete and total relaxation. Pair it with some bath salts to give your mom a home day at the spa.

3. Book Locket Necklace - This beautiful detailed brass book locket is one of the latest additions to the Secret Message Locket line of jewelry. Highly detailed with floral and leaf engravings this locket includes a strip of accordion folded parchment paper so you can personalize this lovely piece for your special mom.

4. Creative Ways to Organize Your Home - If your mom loves to read, then she probably needs to get organized so that she fit more books on her shelves. Wherever you need small-scale storage solutions - from the kitchen to the bathroom, the bedroom to the study - you will find a stylish, crafty solution in this book.

5. Fables and Feathers Duvet Cover - Read between the sheets! Currently sold out from Anthropologie, but you can create your own by scanning the pages of her favorite book and making a custom duvet cover through CafePress! 

6. Edenbrooke by Julianne Donaldson - Does Jane Austen grace the shelves of your mom's library? If you have ever seen your mom gushing over a young and lake-soaked Colin Firth, she will love this clean romance that is reminiscent of Pride and Prejudice. 

7. Vintage Book iDock - For the bibliophile on your gift list: this repurposed tome holds a hidden iPhone or iPad charger. From Rich Neeley Designs, who are inspired by a love of vintage books.

 

8. Hand-Woven Palm Carryall Gift Set - With a beautiful bag to carry her favorite books, this set includes essentials for a quick getaway or relaxing retreat: Includes a Hand-Woven Palm Carryall, Calepino Blank Pocket Notebooks and Hand-Poured Travel Candle. 

9. Mr. Darcy's Finest Earl Grey - If your mom can't get enough of the Regency Period and loves a good spot 'a tea, this gift is for her. She'll take pride in her refined side with Mr. Darcy's special Earl Gray. An exquisite black tea accented with chocolate, bergamot and fine silver dragees. Touches of elegance befitting a gentleman, and gentlewoman.

10. Paddywax Library Boxed Glass Candle Collection - The Paddywax Library Collection pairs exquisite fragrance with a quote from a literary great. 

11. Book Scarf - Have her show of her great taste in books with these fabulous scarves filled with words from her favorite book. Reading is fashionable!

12. The Great Gatsby Bowtie Necklace - Your mom will party like Jay Gatsby with this quirky bow tie necklace presented on a postcard print featuring a quote from The Great Gatsby.

13. Ideal Book Shelf Prints - These beautiful prints to hang on your wall or place on a desk can reflect your mother's reading style. You can also have a custom art painted with books from her own shelf!

14. Personal Library Kit - Want to lend out your favorite books, but worried about getting them back? Revive old-fashioned library circulation techniques for fun and book retention with our classic bestseller!

15. One Line a Day - Let your mom bring to life her inner-writer. This classic memory keeper is the perfect way to track the ups and downs of life, day by day.

16. Book of Tissue - Now she can read her favorite tear-jerker and wipe away her sorrows with this unique tissue box.

17. Book Dust Jackets - FREE! Download these fabulous book jackets for your mom (and maybe for yourself as well). Give her a new book creatively covered with these fun dust jackets or print her off several to cover the books already on her shelves.

18. Twisted Pages Book Art - She loves to read - why not give her decor to match her love? These fabulous vintage books are rescued from the landfill & handcrafted into a letter or symbol of your choice.

19. Book Lover's Scrabble: “Good friends, good books….this is the ideal life.” – Mark Twain The Book Lovers Edition of Scrabble features 2 ways to play including traditional Scrabble fun or custom play with a novel twist allowing players to earn bonus points for literary words. Your mom will love this gift if you promise to join her for game night. 

20. Floating Book Shelves - For an ultra-minimal look, this bookshelf mounts to the wall and becomes invisible behind a stack of books, giving the books the appearance of floating in mid-air. 

Show your literary mom how much you love her and unique she is with these great gift ideas for Mother's Day this year. 

Robin

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Robin Review's it: Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

Book Title: Carter Beats the Devil
Author: Glen David Gold
Pages: 662
Published: 2001
Publisher: Hyperion
Recommended for: 18+

An engaging story of Carter the Great with fantastic illusions and fun historical tidbits.

4.25 Stars

My Opinion: The backdrop of this story is one of historical events mixed in with possibility. As a master of illusions, Carter grows from a child fascinated with magic to an adult who lives for it.

The details that went into the staging and magic acts were flawless. The descriptions gave me the illusion of being an audience member back when Houdini or Carter took the stage. I Iiked that the magic in the book was possible and still so amazing that you could hardly believe it.

The two love stories, though definitely not the center of the book, carried me from the middle to the end. SPOILER: My heart broke when Carter's first love met with tragic accident as part of one of Carter's magic tricks. I liked that he didn't just get over it and had to go through years of struggle before finding his final love.

I was awestruck at how the author took real events from the 1920s, like the death of President Harding, and turned it into a fantastic story that had me Googling the internet to find out what really happened to the president and what Glen David Gold made up. What was even more fun was that some of the things COULD have happened. SPOILER: How cool would if have been for the real President Harding to escape scandal and find peace with his wife on a remote island? I mean, how did he come up with this stuff?!?

Though it took me a few chapters to get into the book (some of the jumping around from character to character didn't get me emotionally engaged until later), overall the book was well-written and researched with enough surprise to keep me reading until the very end. I'm excited to pick up some more of Gold's books.


My Content Rating: PG-13 
SEXUALITY: Moderate (references to prostitution and homosexuality--the red tie)
LANGUAGE/PROFANITY: Mild
DRUG/ALCOHOL USE: Moderate
INTENSE/SCARY SCENES: Moderate (mostly just intense illusions)
VIOLENCE: Moderate (agents getting beat up, attempted murder, death)

**Robin-approved for 18+ audiences**

Quick Guide to the Characters of The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel

My book club read The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel last month. If you've read the book, you know there are a ton of characters and it is hard to keep track of them all. While I was reading, I started taking notes and then created a little guide to help me keep track of these amazing people. If you are planning on reading the book, this guide is a MUST, so I thought I should share the love:

Check out the PDF here!

LTUE Exposed: Orson Scott Card's Take on Ender's Game

"When you make things happen, the people who want to be part of it come along."

I had the opportunity to attend Life, the Universe, and Everything (LTUE) at the Provo Marriot on February 13-15, 2014. The keynote address given by Orson Scott Card was on Saturday. I decided to record parts of his presentation below, where he reads from (and often stops to give side notes) a soon-to-be-published essay he wrote. Card really could be a comedian, though, ironically I'm not sure he means to be that funny. If you don't have time to listen to his speech, here are a few tidbits:

• When adapting someone's story, you should refer to the original material (I think this was a wisecrack at the recent movie of "Ender's Game," though he doesn't actually say the words).
• He admits that when writing Ender (in his book, Ender's Game), he wanted Ender to appear smarter than himself. He regrets somewhat the ending of Ender's Game. Not that he would change what happened, but he would change WHY it happened (he is referring to where Ender basically tells everyone to "do their best" and fly randomly in the final battle). Card said that is what you do "instead of an ending." It didn't ruin the story or the book because by then we were emotionally involved in Ender, but it didn't make him appear smart. 
• He realized now, years later, that he didn't make Ender smart in tactics and strategy, but smart in command. 1. Know your man intimately and unsentimentally 2. Know their strengths and weaknesses. Ender knew how to bring out the best effort in each member of his team. He even helped them to develop their skills, even ones he didn't have himself. 
• He set out only writing Ender's Game to set up Speaker of the Dead. 
• 
  
• He also realizes, though he didn't initially mean, that he wrote part of himself in Ender. Card admits that he learned early on how leadership works as a deacon in the LDS Church and later as a director of some non-approved plays at BYU. This part is hilarious -- you have to listen to it!
• "When you make things happen, the people who want to be part of it, come along." This is what he calls unofficial leadership.
• Referring to his experiences with the drama department at BYU and the professors' hostile actions towards his leadership, he said, "The opposition didn't harm me. On the contrary, I realized how little I needed their approval in order to accomplish my aims." Card learned there that he was always on his own and he couldn't count on anyone to stand up for him.
• Unconsciously, he had made Ender do at battle school what he had done at the BYU drama department.
• He wrote draft after draft of a screen play for Ender's Game and none of them seemed to fit. After he already sold the movie rights, he finally wrote a script that will never be published or sold. The take that worked on this screenplay was focusing on Ender's relationships with the kids that he led. The audience would wish they could be in his army. Then they would love Ender.
• His new ending (that has never been written) would be a scene where there is a holographic conversation with Valentine where she gives Ender a clip of a park they played at when they were younger. She focuses in on one leave that is falling (the surface of the leaf, even if there is no wind, makes it fall and dart and go in different directions, following no real pattern). Ender would then have a realization right before the last battle: we are creatures of the trees, we can be the leaf. Ender would then show the team the leaf and tell them (instead of saying "do your best" and lucky chance would win) to be like the leaf, be as unpredictable as possible, rise and fall, slow down and speed up. The leaf would make it to the surface and so would the ships. Finally, Ender was smart! It led to victory.
• Card plans in the future to rewrite a new edition of Ender's Game. The story would essentially be unchanged, but he would include parts that clear up the contradictions he made in later novels, AND he could add that part above about the leaf, making Ender smart. (You can download this new version, not a new book, but an audio play he wrote from Audible called "Ender's Game Alive". It's different because there's no narrator, but it does its job).
• From short story to novel to screenplay to audioplay, it took Orson Scott Card 38 years to get it right, but he got there and found Ender Wiggin waiting for him at the end.

I wished I could have sat down with Orson Scott Card and picked his brain or listened to him speak longer because this man has a lot of great things to say. I know that authors are people just like you and me, but sometimes I think of them as legends. Whether they mean to or not, the heros in their books do have the power to teach us and change us. I believe Card has done that.

Orson Scott Card LTUE Essay - Part 1

Orson Scott Card LTUE Essay - Part 2

Robin's Top 5 Books of 2013

I read 53 books in 2013 and that doesn't include the unpublished books I read from my writing group and other author friends. Now you might be thinking I must be sitting around on my behind all day long because that is a stinkin' lot of books. Sometimes I wish that were the case, but I do have five kids and a husband to take care of. In actuality, I only "read" about 20% of the books. The rest I listened to on audiobook while running, cleaning, doing laundry, cutting coupons etc. So here they are:

Since you probably don't have time to read more than 50 books a year, I'm going to give you my top picks for 2013. How do they make it on my list?

1.) They receive at least 4 out of 5 stars.
2.) They keep my interest from first page to last.
3.) They have good taste (not trashy).
4.) They are well-written, well-thought out, and unique in some way.
5.) I would read them again.

Hope you have fun reading them!

ROBIN'S TOP 5 BOOK PICKS FROM 2013: 

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
4.5 Stars 
Breathtaking, heartbreaking, merrymaking. 
Clockwork Princess truly transported me to a world where I felt the characters were real enough to touch. Cassandra Clare knows how to bring characters and relationships to life. 

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer4.5 Stars

Action-packed, laced with some fun romance. 
This in #2 in the Lunar Chronicles. I am really loving this series. The characters are so alive. The fairy tale elements are a delight to read. I loved discovering how Meyer was able take the story of Little Red Riding Hood and turn it upside down and inside out in a sci-fi world. Scarlet is trying to find her kidnapped grandmother and then has a run in with a man called Wolf, who she ends up liking, but who sometimes wants to eat her. I mean, how did she come up with this stuff?

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
4 Stars
Eye opening, heart wrenching, a good historical read. 
Louis Zamperini goes from boyhood delinquent to talented runner. Thinking he's on his way to his dreams of the Olympics, WWII unfolds and he is drafted into its ranks. His B-42 is downed at sea. Through wisdom, strength, and unending endurance he tries to survive against thirst, hunger, and sharks. His perseverance is tested even longer as he becomes a POW in Japanese territory.

I not a huge fan of non-fiction, but this one definitely turned my head. True stories are sometimes hard to get through because you know that there is no simple answer to complex problems in real life. Reading about Louis (and his friends) helped me understand a different side of WWII from the holocaust and Germany. The suffering of Americans in another part of the world opened my eyes to a strength I didn't think possible. The historical element of this book was brought forth using interesting facts and never-ending action. Glad I took the time to break away from fairy tales and love stories to give this one a chance.

Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson
4.25 Stars
Sweet and fun love story reminiscent of Jane Austen's Emma. 
It was refreshing to read a character who didn't want to give up her dreams of traveling to India and wasn't willing to let society change her mind. The mystery, the flashbacks, the regency time period, the clean romance, the references to music and birds--all these aspects made it worth the read.

Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter 
5 Stars
Funny, clever, quick read.
Yes, this is a young adult book. Yes, it is about a girl who leaves a boarding school (she conned her way into) to help steal back paintings to save her father. Yes, it's a little juvenile in parts. BUT, I totally loved it! I couldn't help laughing out loud in so many parts. I loved how the perspectives changed, and yet you still felt like you could be Katarina, the cool and witty con artist. Don't ask me how the author did it, but I found that I could totally relate to this teenage girl and her plight as a member of this family in the business of stealing. I realize that stealing is wrong and I'm not in support of the Heist Society's lifestyle. That being said, I seriously want to join Katarina's family. Yeah, I'm kind of a little crazy like that. This is #3 in the series, but I have loved each one!

Tiger's Destiny by Colleen Houck (yes, I realize this is #6, but I couldn't resist)
4.5 Stars
A lovely ending to a compelling, adventuresome, intellectually-stimulating, and heart-strings-pulling series. 
This is #4 in the Tiger's Curse series. I'm so pleased with how this book ended! I wasn't sure how Colleen Houck would be able to tie loose ends. Somehow she did. The final battle got my blood pumping and the last scenes with Ren and Kelsey had my heart racing. It was a truly perfect end to this epic romantic fantasy!

Honorable Mention: Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo 
4 Stars
A dark and emotional fantasy. I can't wait until the 3rd book, Rise and Ruin.