Blog Book Tour: The Literary Mama Anthology

Today's my day on the Literary Mama Anthology blog book tour. I'm so excited! I've been involved with Literary Mama since the beginning, I think. I got involved in Amy Hudock's Books and Babies online writing group and website, and then when Literary Mama launched I was one of the original editors and columnists. So it's fabulous to see the site, and the anthology, doing so well.

If you haven't done so yet, check out the introduction to the anthology here. This serves as a rationale for the site as well, but particularly for the book. This represents some of the best of the best: pieces that continue to inspire, challenge, entertain, enlighten.

Of course everything in the book is still on the site, so why should you buy the book? One reason: reading in bed. Honestly, much as I love the internet, you can't curl up and read it wherever you want. (OK, Susan, I know you do, but not all of us are quite as addicted...or enabled!) So the luxury of reading these essays in the comfort of my own bed, or reading chair, with pen in hand (I always read with pen in hand...), without a screen in front of my face, is just lovely.

As are many of the essays, stories, and poems. What a joy to re-encounter "Packing the Car," for example. I don't always read the poetry on the site, but Andi and Amy have placed it so well among the other works that it's a joy to read it here. What a pleasure to find that "Analyzing Ben" still makes me laugh; that "Acts of Contrition" still has the power to move me. Throughout, the collection builds on itself, develops so many of the important things about motherhood: recognizing your children as part of yourself, as individuals in their own right, as inheritors of your own family story, as progenitors of their own.

I was going to give my review copy away, I must say, thinking, well, I can always read it all again on the site. But instead, I'm buying a couple of others for friends, so I can hang on to mine, mark it up, and read it in bed--again.