Monday Mailbox

A smaller collection of books in the mail box than the previous few weeks sure doesn't mean less interesting books at all. I'm really itching to dive into all of these. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Outside Boy by Jeanine Cummins came from Angela at NAL.
In Ireland, a young gypsy boy who has always lived a peripatetic life settles into a town so that he can go to church and school. I can only imagine the culture shock and the potential prejudices he must face, and that, coupled with a long-buried secret gives this novel great potential.

How to Mellify a Corpse by Vicky Leon came from Allie at Inkwell Management.
For someone who is frightened of her own shadow and won't read creepy books, I do manage to find some strange ones, don't I? Better yet, I think this one sounds fascinating and I know that my teenager will be at least as fascinated with it as I am so it's win-win. I will be hosting a giveaway for this one next month if you are as offbeat as I am so check back.

The Writing Circle by Corinne Demas came from the publisher.
The trend in books a few years ago seemed to be ensemble books about book clubs. This one is an ensemble book about a writing group and I'm curious to see how it takes a familiar trope and changes it. That Demas is a poet and a short story author as well will probably change the feel of the book entirely and I'm very interested to see those influences at work.

Cheap Cabarnet by Cathie Beck came from the publisher.
Is this not a gorgeous cover? A memoir about a woman who advertises to form a group of Women on the Way and in the process makes a once in a lifetime friendship, this looks like a marvelous tale of growing into life.

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.

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:

Critical Care by Theresa Brown
College in a Nutskull by Anders Henriksson
After the Rain by Karen White
Spellbinder by Helen Stringer
Little Bee by Chris Cleave

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)
The Season on Second Chances by Diane Meier
A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova

Reviews posted this week:

The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison
The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

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

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
Critical Care by Theresa Brown
College in a Nutskull by Anders Henriksson
After the Rain by Karen White
Spellbinder by Helen Stringer
Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Saturday Shout-Out

On my travels through the blogging world, I find many books that pique my interest. I always add them to my wish list immediately but I tend to forget who deserves the blame credit for inspiring me to add them to my list (and to whom my husband would like to send the bill when I get around to actually buying them). So each Saturday I'm going to try and keep better track, link to my fellow book ferreter-outers (I know, not a word but useful nonetheless), and hopefully add to some of your wish lists too.

Powder Necklace by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond was mentioned on Bibliophile By the Sea.

The Lost Girls by Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett, and Amanda Pressner was mentioned on Bibliophile By the Sea.

Paris Times Eight by Deirdre Kelly was mentioned on Readerbuzz.

The Icing on the Cupcake by Jennifer Ross was mentioned on Bookingmama.

Delhi by Sam Miller was mentioned on The Book Case.

Such a Pretty Face by Cathy Lamb was mentioned on The Crowded Leaf.

The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass was mentioned on Breaking the Spine.

What goodies have you added to your wish lists recently? Make your own list and leave a comment here so we can all see who has been a terrible influence inspiring you lately.

Review: The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

One of my book clubs chose this book for last month. I was less than enthusiastic. I could list out all the reasons why it didn't appeal to me when it was being presented but the two biggies were that polygamy doesn't trip my trigger and the fact that the modern day parallel story line has at its center a plural wife who is accused of murdering her husband, well you've pretty much hit it out of the ballpark in terms of not interesting me in spending my reading time with the book. But I have always been the teacher's pet and that translates in adult life to me being a dutiful bookclub member. So I read the book. And it wasn't as brutal an experience as I'd thought. Don't get me wrong, I still have less than zero interest in books that contain murders and/or polygamy, but I am not sorry I read this one.

Ann Eliza Young was Brigham Young's 19th wife. Well, she was publicly known as his 19th wife. History is not clear on how many wives he actually had over his adult lifetime. But Ann Eliza was not happy as a plural wife and she ultimately sued for a divorce, crusading to end the practice of polygamy in the United States. A fictionalized history of her life makes up a good portion of this book. The other portion is a parallel story of modern day polygamists, the First Latter Day Saints, who broke away from the Mormon church over the issue of polygamy. In this second story, modern day 19th wife BeckyLyn has been accused of killing her husband. The case seems particularly cut and dried as he was online chatting when he was murdered and had mentioned that wife #19 had just walked into the room. Several states away, Jordan, BeckyLyn's long estranged son, sees the news clipping about the murder and knows he has to go and try to exonerate his mother despite the fact that she allowed the FLDS Prophet to kick Jordan out of the group and her life. Interspersed with Jordan's investigation, which he is uniquely suited to undertake, having been a former insider in this very secretive and closed society, is the story of Ann Eliza's determination to see polygamy criminalized.

The two stories obviously have something in common but they rub up against each other a tad less than comfortably. The historical sections are told in fictionalized documents, a wikipedia article, letters, and a graduate student's research. Because of this method of storytelling, there are more repetitions than necessary and it can be hard to read yet another account of the same span of time in Ann Eliza's life. Certainly a well rounded telling, complete with differing perspectives is a positive but there's just a bit of an excess here. The modern day story, while interesting, failed to hold my interest as much as the historical. In this, my opinion was counter to almost everyone else in the book group. They all far prefered Jordan's investigative quest. To me, however, this quest was unlikely and I'm not sure I ever understood Jordan's motivation for undertaking it. My interest in it was probably also colored by the fact that I thought this fictional man (Jordan's father and husband to a harem) was reprehensible and BeckyLyn was a dishrag or doormat. Perhaps it's a failure in imagination on my part but I had trouble mustering up interest in such lackluster characters and didn't much care to find out who the real murderer was.

I've made it sound as if I didn't like it at all, didn't I? That is certainly not true though. I found the history of the Mormon church fascinating, even if I find it less than credible personally. The idea to marry historical polygamy to the reality of latter day splinter sects, making sure the reader knows that this abhorent practice has not been stamped out, was theoretically a good one. I would have liked to see more of a connection between the stories though. A character driven story when discussing Ann Eliza's life, the book takes on a completely different tone, that of a plot driven murder mystery in the modern day Jordan sections. Definitely a novel cleft in two, this a long book that has an equal chance of appealing to historical fiction readers and mystery readers as well. But take note that it also has equal chance of alienating each group as well with its dichotomous rendering. As I said above, I'm not sorry I read it and I will be curious to see what Ebershoff does with a shorter, more straightforward story since I have long had his previous novel on my shelves.

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!