MONDAY MEMES: MAILBOX & WHAT ARE YOU READING? — FEB. 21

MONDAY MEMES

Welcome to our Monday Memes, in which we reflect on our past week in books and blogging, and plan for the next one.

Mailbox Monday is hosted in February by Library of Clean Reads.

What Are You Reading? is hosted by Book Journey.

 

MAILBOX MONDAY:

 

I was very excited by the books I received this week, all purchases I made.  Some were print books and some were e-books.

 

1.  A Widow’s Story, by Joyce Carol Oates

Here’s a blurb on Amazon:

Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a “secondary infection” while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of “death-duties,” painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning….

2.  The Easter Parade, by Richard Yates

A Snippet from Amazon:

In The Easter Parade, first published in 1976, we meet sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes when they are still the children of divorced parents. We observe the sisters over four decades, watching them grow into two very different women. Sarah is stable and stalwart, settling into an unhappy marriage. Emily is precocious and independent, struggling with one unsatisfactory love affair after another. Richard Yates’s classic novel is about how both women struggle to overcome their tarnished family’s past, and how both finally reach for some semblance of renewal….

3.  Now You See Her, by Joy Fielding

Amazon Blurb:

Fifty-year-old Marcy Taggart is in Ireland celebrating her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with one notable absence, that of her husband, who recently left her for the female golf pro at their country club. Ever since the mysterious disappearance of her daughter, Devon, two years ago, Marcy has been suffering one long nervous breakdown. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband and her sister are convinced that Devon, who had bipolar disorder, committed suicide. But Marcy believes Devon ran away to start a new life. When Marcy takes a break from her relentless sightseeing in Cork, she catches sight of Devon through a window, and so begins her reckless odyssey to reclaim her missing daughter….

Then I received a $20.00 gift certificate in a contest win from Book Journey, which led to my downloading these e-books.

Thanks, Sheila!

4.  Every Secret Thing, by Laura Lippman

Two 11-year-old children-good girl Alice Manning and bad girl Ronnie Fuller-wander homeward in Baltimore after being kicked out of a friend’s pool party. They discover a baby in an unattended carriage by the front door of a house and steal it away. The reader watches in horror, knowing what will come next. The baby dies, and Alice and Ronnie are imprisoned for seven years. The mystery involves which girl did the killing, and which was the dupe….

5.  The Tapestry of Love, by Rosy Thornton

A warm and uplifting story of how a woman falls in love with a place and its people: a landscape, a community and a fragile way of life. A rural idyll: that’s what Catherine is seeking when she sells her house in England and moves to a tiny hamlet in the Cévennes mountains. With her divorce in the past and her children grown, she is free to make a new start, and her dream is to set up in business as a seamstress. But this is a harsh and lonely place when you’re no longer just here on holiday. There is French bureaucracy to contend with, not to mention the mountain weather, and the reserve of her neighbours, including the intriguing Patrick Castagnol. And that’s before the arrival of Catherine’s sister, Bryony…

6.  The Lake of Dreams, by Kim Edwards

When Lucy Jarrett returns to her childhood home in Lake of Dreams, N.Y., she learns that her brother, Blake, who’s gone into the family business, and his girlfriend hope to drain a controversial marsh to construct a high-end property. Meanwhile, Lucy, who remains haunted by her father’s death in a fishing accident years earlier, reconnects with her first boyfriend, Keegan Fall, now a successful glass artist. But when she sees something familiar in the pattern of one of his pieces, and discovers a hidden note in her childhood home, Lucy finally digs into her family’s mysterious past. Unfortunately, the lazy expository handling of information mutes the intrigue, and readers will see the reignited spark between Keegan and Lucy coming for miles….

 

What a treasure trove of books!  I’m loving each and every one.

***

 

WHAT ARE YOU READING?

 

In the past week, I’ve enjoyed my blogging and reading.

Here are some of my blog posts:

WEEKEND POTPOURRI — TAXES

READING, SPARKY TREASURES, ETC.

SATURDAY SNAPSHOT — EUROPEAN IMAGES

ROW 80 UPDATE — THE TORTOISE & THE HARE

 

Books Read and Reviewed – Click Titles for Reviews:

1.  Ladybird, by Grace Livingston Hill

2.  Married:  A Fine Predicament, by Anne Roiphe

3.  The Long Road Home, by Mary Alice Monroe

4.  My Passion for Design, by Barbra Streisand

 

What’s Up Next?

1.  The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain

The fictional story brings Hadley Richardson Hemingway out from the formidable shadow cast by her famous husband. Though doomed, the Hemingway marriage had its giddy high points, including a whirlwind courtship and a few fast and furious years of the expatriate lifestyle in 1920s Paris….

2.  The Book of Tomorrow, by Cecelia Ahern

“A veritable modern-day Gothic, Ahern’s engrossing new novel is filled with family secrets, intrigue, and magic aplenty.”

3.  Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen (I’ll probably be reading this one awhile)

Franzen’s second novel is a wrenching, funny, and forgiving portrait of a Midwestern family (from St. Paul this time, rather than the fictional St. Jude). Patty and Walter Berglund find each other early: a pretty jock, focused on the court and a little lost off it, and a stolid budding lawyer, besotted with her and almost burdened by his integrity. They make a family and a life together, and, over time, slowly lose track of each other….

 

So that’s it…finally!  It’s going to be a very busy week.  What about you?  I’d love to read about your books, etc…..