MONDAY FROM THE INTERIOR: MAILBOX MONDAY & WHAT ARE YOU READING? — OCT. 22

 

 

Good morning, and welcome to another Monday, in which we celebrate our reading, blogging, and life.  Mailbox Monday is hosted in October by Mailbox Monday blog;  and Book Journey brings us another edition of What Are You Reading?

 

MAILBOX MONDAY:

 

What a great mailbox week!  I received an unexpected book from an author; I received a banned book contest win; I received a preordered book from Amazon; and impulsively downloaded an e-book to Sparky.

Here’s my haul:

1.  You Tell Your Dog First, by Alison Pace (Author for Review)

 

You Tell Your Dog First…

About the date you just had…about the questionable results of a medical test…about the good and the bad…about everything.

For years, award-winning author Alison Pace was a dog person without a dog. And then, she got Carlie—a feisty and fluffy West Highland white terrier. She could weed out bad boyfriends with a sniff of her button-black nose and win the hearts of lifelong friends with an adoring gaze. Suddenly, Alison had a constant companion and confidante, who went with her on long morning rambles in Central Park, on trips to the country and the beach, and on her search for inner peace, love, and happiness. Through Carlie, Alison found herself connected to the world as never before.

With her trademark warmth, wit and humor, Alison shares her stories…the tales of a dog person who found her dog.

2.  Forgotten, by Catherine McKenzie

Emma Tupper is a dedicated lawyer with a bright future. But when she takes a month-long leave of absence to go on an African vacation, she ends up facing unexpected consequences. After she falls ill and spends six months trapped in a remote village thanks to a devastating earthquake, Emma returns home to discover that her friends, boyfriend, and colleagues thought she was dead—and that her life has moved on without her.

As she struggles to re-create her old life, throwing herself into solving a big case for a client and trying to reclaim her beloved apartment from the handsome photographer who assumed her lease, everyone around her thinks she should take the opportunity to change. But is she willing to sacrifice her job, her relationships, and everything else she worked so hard to build?

In Forgotten, Catherine McKenzie tweaks a classic tale of discovering who we really are when everything that brings meaning to our lives is lost.

3.  Killer Takes All (e-book)  by Erica Spindler

The White Rabbit beckons you to follow him, down the rabbit hole, into his world. He’s a deceiver, a trickster. You won’t know what is truth and what is a lie. He aims to best you. Beat you. And when he does, you die.

A friend’s brutal murder turns former homicide detective Stacy Killian’s life upside down. Unwilling to trust Spencer Malone, the overconfident New Orleans detective assigned to the case, Stacy is compelled to return to the investigative role she had fled.

The investigation leads Stacy and Spencer to White Rabbit, a cultish fantasy role-playing game. White Rabbit is dark, violent—and addictive. As the body count mounts, they find themselves trapped in a terrifying game that’s more real than life and death. Because anyone can die before the final moment when White Rabbit is over…and the killer takes all.

 

4.  The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (Contest Win from The Key to the Gate’s Rebecca)

 

The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

First published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom’s Cabin summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book—which takes its title from the first verse: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s fictional chronicle of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

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WHAT ARE YOU READING?

 

Welcome to our Monday reading event where we come together to share our reading, blogging, and life adventures, and where we find a great community of book bloggers.

While you’re hopping around the blogosphere today, I hope you’ll pop in at Curl up and Read, where my Third Blogoversary Giveaway is going on!!

 

This week was a really productive one for me.  Not only in terms of reading, but blogging as well.  Here’s some of what happened on the blogs this week:

On the blogs, I’ve done several non-meme posts:

Round Four Check-In (for ROW 80);

Savoring Our Guilty Pleasures, One Moment at a Time;

Three-Year Blogoversary & Giveaway;

Thursday Potpourri:  Shifting Perspectives & Objects of Affection;

What Sparks My Enthusiasm on a Thursday;

Unraveling the Web – An Excerpt (at Story Corner);

Sweet Saturday Sample:  Blue Monday;

Weekend Potpourri:  New Perspectives;

Wendy Wax:  Guest Post – Ten Reasons to read Ten Beach Road in October.

Books Read/Reviewed:  Click Titles for Reviews

Review:  Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan

Review (Coming Nov. 13 during Blog Tour) Curiosity Killed the Kat, by Elizabeth Nelson

Review:    The Things That Matter, by Nate Berkus

Review:     Blackberry Winter, by Sarah Jio

Review:     Tuesday’s Gone, by Nicci French

 

What’s Up Next? (Click Titles/Covers for More Info)

1.  An Order of Coffee and Tears (e-book), by Brian Spangler

2.  Play Him Again (e-book), by Jeffrey Stone

3.  Dead on Ice, by Lauren Carr

 

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And that’s my week!  I hope you’ll stop by and share your own adventures.