Book Blogger Hop

Every Friday Crazy-for-Books hosts the Book Blogger Hop. She invites bloggers to post a link to their blogs and then visit other links in an effort to build community, find new blogs to follow, and add to our towering to be read piles in our surfing around. Want to join in? Go to the Crazy-for-Books and add yourself to the hippity hoppity list.

For anyone visiting me from the hop, I hope you enjoy poking around here. You'll find book reviews, a few memes, musings on my crazy life, and the occasional giveaway. I read very ecelctically: literary fiction, contemporary and women's fiction, narrative non-fiction, and romance, new releases, back list, and out of print. I have an obscene to be read mountain so there's no telling what will end up on here next (or even if it will fall in line with the sorts of books I say I like to read). So leave a comment, say hello, and make yourself at home looking around. Feel free to peer at the bookshelves. I'm likely off doing the same thing at your blog.

The Ocean Between Us winners

I finally managed to grab a moment on here to visit random.org and find some winners for Susan Wiggs' The Ocean Between us.

The grand prize winner is #9--Margie.

The two runners up are #29 and #19 --Sarah E. and lavendersbluegreen.

I don't know what it was about anything with the #9 in it tonight but congrats to all three of you. E-mails are going out to the winners.

New York Challenge

In honor of BEA and the Book Blogger Convention, Jill at Fizzy Thoughts created the New York Challenge. I'm not going to make it to either fun event and I know I'll be jealous as all get out of the people who are able to go and wallow in books and the people who make them possible. Despite being terribly jealous, I'm going to go ahead and join this challenge so I can be in NYC between the pages of a book if nothing else. Check out the link above to see the rules (but do it quickly since this one is almost over). My book for the challenge is The Girl Next Door by Elizabeth Noble. I've got it read but by the rules of the challenge, I also have to get it reviewed by the 15th. That could be the real challenge for me right now!

Jewish Literature Challenge

I joined this one a couple of years ago and had a fairly extensive list for it. I'm older, wiser, and over challenged now but I still want to join Callista's Jewish Literature Challenge. The rules are easy: read a book or books by a Jewish author or about Judaism. Read said book or books between Purim and Rosh Hashanah. That's it. Dead simple, right? Like I said, I shouldn't be joining more challenges but I'm going to anyway so at the very least I will exercise some restraint and commit to a whopping one book: Sex, Drugs and Gefilte Fish edited by Shana Leibman. Should be fun.

Review: The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison

This is a dark and troubled story. Stella is a bit adrift in her life. She works as a personal assistant for an inspirational writer who is more of a barracuda in her out-of-the-spotlight life. She's dating a married man. And she spends her evenings at alcohol and drug soaked parties in New York City. She's never quite decided what to make of her life, marking time until her indomitable grandmother starts to fail. Giving up her unsatisfying existence in the city to be the caretaker for her grandmother, she discovers that her mother had a sister, Tilly, about whom Stella knows nothing. After her grandmother's death, she feels honor-bound to tell Tilly face to face that her mother is dead and so she sets off to find this wayward aunt, estranged from the family for so many years. Tilly has had a hard life. She's a serious alcoholic, living in a trash-filled trailer, hoarding gin and she is reluctant to let Stella into her life. But Stella pushes her way in and Tilly and Stella create a fragile family as Stella tries to help Tilly finally get her life on track.

Stella and Tilly both narrate the story alternately, offering the reader glimpses of their broken souls. Tilly's back story, her time as a prostitute, the birth of her son Abe, her inability to break her dependence on alcohol, and the secrets and lies that drove her out of her family are all powerful and terrible stories. Stella is not quite a counterpoint to Tilly's unrelentingly bleak and doomed person. She details her own disappointments and the mind-numbing stagnation of her life. And Abe, Tilly's son, adds his own layer of sadness to the story. Really, the misery and dysfunction that infuse this novel is a bit overwhelming. Jamison has captured the despair and pain of alcoholism, the death-grip with which the addiction holds its sufferers and she has accurately portrayed the futility and hopelessness that can thread its way into the lives of the people around the alcoholic. This is not a comfortable read. It is not a happily ever after. It is tragedy on a personal scale. And it can be hard to read but equally hard from which to turn away.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

Books I completed this week are:

Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show by Frank Delaney
The Girl Next Door by Elizabeth Noble
You Suck by Christopher Moore
The Mediator 6: Twilight by Meg Cabot
The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes by Randi Davenport
Billie's Kiss by Elizabeth Knox
Hardly a Husband by Rebecca Hagan Lee

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Great Lakes Nature by Mary Blocksma (this is going to take me all year as I read her year's entries on the corresponding days of this year)

Reviews posted this week:

A Rather Lovely Inheritance by C.A. Belmond
Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden
Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You by Dorian Cirrone

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison
The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show by Frank Delaney
The Girl Next Door by Elizabeth Noble
You Suck by Christopher Moore
The Mediator 6: Twilight by Meg Cabot
The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes by Randi Davenport
Billie's Kiss by Elizabeth Knox
Hardly a Husband by Rebecca Hagan Lee

Giveaway on the blog this week:
The Ocean Between Us by Susan Wiggs ends TODAY so get your entries in quickly!

Monday Mailbox

Another week of me being spoiled in terms of great-looking new books. Don't these look just fantastic? This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Whiter Than Snow by Sandra Dallas came from Anne at Authors on the Web.
I have enjoyed the previous books of Dallas' which I've read and this tale of children buried in an avalanche while on their way home from school and the town's handling of this terrible event sounds marvelous.

Up From the Blue by Susan Henderson came from the publisher.
A woman facing her past and the truth of her mother's crippling depression as she prepares to have her own first child, this should be a riveting read.

The Blessing of the Animals by Katrina Kittle came from the publisher.
A look at marriage and love in its many stages, this novel about a veterinarian and the animals who help her heal, this sounds like an interesting and different take on coupling and uncoupling.

The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin came from the publisher.
This one is getting raves around the internet and I'm curious to see this take on the personal level of the civil rights movement.

Sweet Dates in Basra by Jessica Jiji came from the publisher.
1940's Iraq, a beautiful young girl, and a forbidden love. How delicious could this one be?

The Lovers by Vendela Vida came from the publisher.
A recently widowed woman goes to Turkey, where she and her husband honeymooned to try and heal her grief, but she is ensnared in the lives of the people around her and the place she to which she has fled. Since my husband and I also honeymooned in Turkey, this one appeals to me not only for the story but for the tug of memory it is sure to evoke in me.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Marcia at The Printed Page and enjoy seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.