Tag: Ellie Midwood

#TheSundayPost VII | Just your average book blogger celebrating her seven years being socially engaged online!

Posted Sunday, 16 February, 2020 by jorielov , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 12 Comments

The Sunday Post badge created by Jorie in Canva using Unsplash.com photography (Creative Commons Zero).

[Official Blurb] The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share News. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog. This is your news post, so personalize it! Include as much as you want or as little. Be creative, it can be a vlog or just a showcase of your goodies. Link up once a week or once a month, you decide. Book haul can include library books, yard sale finds, arcs and bought books..share them!

  • Enter your link on the post-
  • Sundays beginning at 12:01 am (CST) (link will be open all week)
  • Link back to this post or this blog
  • Visit others who have linked up
  • Read this week’s #TheSundayPost!

A note about the format I am using to journal #TheSundayPost:

I am finding I like being able to give my readers who cannot visit my blog each time a new post, review or guest feature goes live a digest journal of what is happening on #JLASblog each week! If you are familiar with the style in which I journal my readerly adventures via #WWWednesdays (see also Archive) you’ll know why I like this journalled style for #TheSundayPost!

It’s a way of talking about what is bookishly on my mind whilst sharing where my travels in Fiction & Non-Fiction took me through the last seven days! Quite stellar – so very thankful I was encouraged to participate as I love being able to think about which stories settled into my heart and which of the stories I am most eager to see arrive by postal mail and/or via audiobook! It’s a bit of a lovely way to journal your bookish life and have a weekly reminder of the experiences of you’ve gathered and love to remember! In regards to getting back into the groove with #WWWeds – I’m either going to make the meme bi-monthly or monthly which I’ll decide within the next fortnight.

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And, then,…

Jorie finally returns to journalling her weekly bookish adventures,…

Finding the motivation to write #TheSundayPost has been a bit tricky the past few years, which is why you’ve noticed a staunch reduction in posts alighting in my feeds! I had a lot of good  intentions to resume this lovely meme I was enjoying participating in but structuring it the way I wanted to have my weekly journalled notes to appear on my blog was part of the issue and the other half of it really is that I have a lot to shuffle behind-the-blog so to speak (we all do,..) to where I was thankful I had the hours I needed to maintain Jorie Loves A Story but when it came to writing up supplemental posts and keeping in step with the memes I love to blog about – long ago, I realised something had to ‘give’ and these were the posts I had to put on hiatus.

Some months I thought I might be able to return to them sooner, so there are a few notes here or there saying “#TheSundayPost” is returning this week or that week, but no, they haven’t returnt until now! I have a lot of news I never had the chance to share from past reading challenges or past milestones of the blog – I might tuck those into some retrospective posts as the months move forward. For now, I simply wanted to try to recapture a bit of what has been going on since January and then, I’ll tackle what I want to share from [2019-back].

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Parajunkee Designs

*UPcoming!* blog & Twitter milestones:

(celebrating my 7th Year as a book blogger and joyful tweeter : dates to remember!)

I created my blog on the 31st of March, 2013 – my blogoversary!

I launched it LIVE to the world on 6th August, 2013 – my blog’s birthday!

I waited til the 13th of November, 2013 to join Twitter – my #twitterversary!

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I almost cannot believe *seven years!* have elapsed since I first created this idea I had for a book blog and undertook the journey of what has emerged through seeking out the bookish and readerly adventures I’ve curated ever since I first started to blog my bookish and geeky life wayy back in [2013] !! I hadn’t known then how my life would be tenfold #blessed by the authors, their stories and the bookish culture I would endeavour to become a part of until I was into my first few years as a book blogger. There was no guide and blueprint towards sorting out this book blogosphere world nor the twitterverse where I undertook getting socially chatty on a platform I never expected I’d take like a duck to water to explore, engage and carve out my own joyfully tweeting presence seven years in the making!

I’ve worked with publishers in the United States, Canada, the UK and aboard whilst I have had the chance to get to host blog tours with genre focused blog touring companies inasmuch as innovative and insightful touring companies who either focus on select works of Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry. Each step of the way, I was not just hosting blog tours or seeking stories for review consideration but I was endeavouring with each opportunity which crossed my path to read deeper and to seek out the stories which :pushed: me into new horizons of literary exploration. For me, that was always the key goal: to find the stories being writ by the authors who are giving me a wicked good read!

I never knew if I could balance my online readerly life the same way I balance my IRL readerly life – but I have found being a hybrid reader has had its best benefits because I can move between mainstream and INSPY offerings by publishers, publicists, authors, agents and touring companies quite easily. Each year, I have decided to seek out new adventures and to re-shift what I wanted to focus on – I started to reduce how many blog tours I would host each month back in [2016] something I happily maintained until this February [2020] where I slide back into a bit of a chaotic blog schedule! (laughs)

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Through the years, I’ve disclosed snippets of my walk in faith, my struggles of being a migraineur (someone who has chronic migraines) and have found that I love hosting guest features where I get to interview different guests – authors, editors, narrators (of audiobooks), actors (for Indie Film projects) and other creatives who have crossed my path. I still love blogging the heart out of the stories I am reading – not just to examine the story as a discerning reader myself but to truly give a strong impression about what I found inside the story in order to help someone else choose whether or not the story I’ve read and blogged about is a good ‘fit’ for their own readerly curiosities. As we all gravitate towards different stories at different times – we all dance through genres and literary styles – a book which appeals to us today might not resonate with us when we go to read it, etc. I find I love visiting with the book bloggers who give me something to ‘chew on’ as I’m reading their blogs – from their reviews, to their guest features to their discussion posts. I want to know more than the surface layer of their reactions to stories and that is what I try to bring to my own readers here on Jorie Loves A Story. (and yes, the “a” is purposefully shown in caps!) Read More

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Posted Sunday, 16 February, 2020 by jorielov in Bits & Bobbles of Jorie, Blog Birthdays & Blogoversaries, Blogosphere Events & Happenings, Bookish Memes, JLAS Update Post, Jorie Loves A Story, Photography of Jorie, Spontaneous Musings, Stories of Jorie, The Sunday Post

Book Spotlight | “Metropolis” by Ellie Midwood

Posted Monday, 10 February, 2020 by jorielov , , 0 Comments

Book Spotlight banner created by Jorie in Canva

Acquired Book By: I am a regular tour hostess for blog tours via Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours whereupon I am thankful to have been able to host such a diverse breadth of stories, authors and wonderful guest features since I became a hostess! HFVBTs is one of the very first touring companies I started working with as a 1st Year Book Blogger – uniting my love and passion with Historical Fiction and the lovely sub-genres inside which I love devouring. Whether I am reading selections from Indie Authors & publishers to Major Trade and either from mainstream or INSPY markets – I am finding myself happily residing in the Historical past each year I am a blogger.

What I have been thankful for all these years since 2013 is the beautiful blessing of discovering new areas of Historical History to explore through realistically compelling Historical narratives which put me on the front-lines of where History and human interest stories interconnect. It has also allowed me to dive deeper into the historic past and root out new decades, centuries and millenniums to explore. For this and the stories themselves which are part of the memories I cherish most as a book blogger I am grateful to be a part of the #HFVBTBlogTours blogger team.

I received a complimentary of “Metropolis” direct from the author Ellie Midwood in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.

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Why I wanted to read “Metropolis”:

I recognised the film title this novel is based on immediately after receiving the blog tour invite and I must admit, that is what inspired my interest in reading the novel! I have a propensity for seeking out Biographical Historical Fiction inasmuch as I love stories set round important time periods of History or are based on actual living persons or events; including the production of this infamous Classic film! Now, when it comes to Classic Hollywood – I have been an appreciator of early 20th Century film-making for most of my life!

As you might have gathered when I read the first Renee Patrick Cosy Historical Mystery wherein Edith Head plays a strong role in sleuthing out the details of this crafty & clever series! I had such a wonderful pleasure of being caught up inside Old Hollywood and the culture of motion pictures as only Renee Patrick can tell the story as their a husband & wife team of writers who have such a wicked passion for Classic Films!

Thus, I thought ‘Metropolis’ might be a fitting #nextread as I thought it might be an interesting chapter on not just film history but about a part of the past I don’t oft get to read as this dances round the impact of war and how people were striving to restart their lives after such great losses.

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Book Spotlight | “Metropolis” by Ellie MidwoodMetropolis
by Ellie Midwood
Source: Author via Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours

Weimar Berlin, 1924

Unemployed actors, profiteers, cabaret girls, and impoverished aristocracy – out of this wild set of characters populating Weimar Berlin, Margarete Gräfin von Steinhoff belongs to the latter category. Having lost everything due to hyper-inflation, she considers jumping into the freezing waters of the Spree rather than facing the humiliating existence shared by millions of her fellow Germans. However, a chance meeting makes her change her mind at the last moment and offers her a chance to rely on the help of the metropolis itself, where anything can be sold and bought for money and where connections are everything. The bustling nightlife of cosmopolitan Berlin, with its casinos and dance halls, brings good income for the ones who don’t burden themselves too heavily with morals.

After a New Year’s Eve party, Margot finally meets her ever-absent and mysterious neighbor, Paul Schneider, who makes a living by producing a certain type of film for his rich clientele. Under his guidance, Margot discovers a new passion of hers – photography and soon, her talents are noticed by the prominent newspaper, Berliner Tageblatt itself. But being an official photographer of the most celebrated events of the La Scala and most famous Berlin theaters no longer satisfies Margot’s ambitions. As soon as the chance presents itself for her to get involved with the cinematography on the set of “Metropolis” – the film with the highest budget ever produced by the UFA – Margot jumps at it, without thinking twice. At the same time, Paul becomes involved with a rival project, “The Holy Mountain,” which stars an as yet unknown actress and an emerging director in, Leni Riefenstahl. As the two women meet, professional rivalry soon turns into a true friendship, fueled by their passion for cinematography. However, due to the economic woes facing Germany, both projects soon run out of money and now, both film crews must go to extreme lengths to save their respective productions.

Set against the backdrop of a decadent, vibrant, and fascinatingly liberal Weimar Berlin, “Metropolis” is a novel of survival, self-discovery, and self-sacrifice, in the name of art, love, and friendship.

Genres: Biographical Fiction, Feminist Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction



Places to find the book:

Add to LibraryThing

ISBN: 9781660165759

Published by Self Published

on 13th January, 2020

Format: Trade Paperback

Pages: 238

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Converse via: #HistFic or #HistNov
+ #Metropolis and #HFVBTBlogTours

Available Formats: Trade paperback and Ebook

About Ellie Midwood

Ellie Midwood

Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. After obtaining her BA in Linguistics, Ellie decided to make writing her full-time career and began working on her first full-length historical novel, “The Girl from Berlin.” Ellie is continuously enriching her library with new research material and feeds her passion for WWII and Holocaust history by collecting rare memorabilia and documents.

In her free time, Ellie is a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, neat freak, adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama. Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait.

For more information on Ellie and her novels, please visit her online.

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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

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Posted Monday, 10 February, 2020 by jorielov in 20th Century, Biographical Fiction & Non-Fiction, Blog Tour Host, Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours