MONDAY MEMES: MAILBOX & WHAT ARE YOU READING? — JUNE 13

Adding to My Shelves One Day at a Time....

 

Welcome to another edition of our Monday Memes, including Mailbox Monday, hosted this month by Bluestocking; and What Are You Reading?, hosted by Book Journey.

 

MAILBOX MONDAY:

 

I received two books in the mail this week:  one I purchased from Amazon, and the other I won in a contest at the lovely Socrates blog.  Thanks, Yvonne!

 

1.  The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, by Joshilyn Jackson (contest win)

“… buoyant and moving ….beautifully balanced between magical and realist fiction… closer in tone and voice to Alice Sebold’s ‘The Lovely Bones’ or Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe trilogy.”
–Atlanta Journal Constitution

“A ghost story, family psychodrama, and murder mystery all in one. Jackson’s latest is a wild, smartly calibrated achievement. A-.”
–Entertainment Weekly

2.  The Little Women Letters, by Gabrielle Donnelly

“Gabrielle Donnelly’s THE LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS radiates a rare warmth and charm that had me smiling from beginning to end. The characters absolutely live, and the story is utterly compelling. I quite simply love Donnelly’s voice!” —Santa Montefiore, author of The French Gardener and The Mermaid Garden

“Witty, warm, and bubbling over with voice, The Little Women Letters is a love letter to and from a set of unforgettable heroines. Gabrielle Donnelly’s homage is just what a literary tribute should be: full of compassion, heart, and fun.” – – Erin Blakemore, author of The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

***

 

WHAT ARE YOU READING?

 

Last week I felt myself moving seamlessly from blogging to reading, with the occasional venture into my writing territory.  I’m now polishing and tweaking my WIP.

Here Are a Few Blog Posts:

SPREADING HER WINGS – AN EXCERPT

SATURDAY SNAPSHOT – LIGHTS

6-12 CHECK-IN POST — POLISHING

SATURDAY POTPOURRI — SCENTS & SECRETS

 

Books Read & Reviewed – Click Titles for Reviews:

1.  Disturbing the Peace, by Richard Yates

2.  The Violets of March, by Sarah Jio

3.  The Pumpkin Eater, by Penelope Mortimer

4.  The Midwife’s Confession, by Diane Chamberlain

 

So What’s Up Next?

1.  Whitethorn Woods, by Maeve Binchy (from the TBRs)

Nestled outside the once sleepy Irish village of Rossmore in a copse known as Whitethorn Woods is the shrine of St. Ann’s Well, which attracts so many of the faithful and hopeful that the little town overflows with visitors. This prompts a controversial proposal to construct a bypass highway that would divert traffic, ironically, right through the Woods, thus destroying the source of the town’s popularity. Worried that the shrine’s days are numbered, villagers flock to the Well, where they plead for everything from the restoration of a faltering love affair to the recognition of an ancestor’s legacy….

2.  Dismantled, by Jennifer McMahon

“Dismantlement equals freedom.” “To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart.” These are the credos of the Compassionate Dismantlers, a subversive clique of art majors in a Vermont college spearheaded by a sexy and diabolical prankster. Suz purports to be an eco-saboteur, but jealousy and revenge are her primary motives. How strangely bewitched her followers are, how dangerous their actions become, and how wretchedly things go wrong. Nine years after the outlaw group’s catastrophic demise, survivors Henry and Tess live isolated in the countryside, harboring a ruinous secret. Now it seems that the time of reckoning is at hand….

3.  Dedication, by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus (from the TBRs)

The team behind The Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl returns with another breezy chick lit portrayal of a woman wronged and, eventually, empowered….

4.  The Year We Left Home (e-book), by Jean Thompson

“Lovely . . . Told with extraordinary grace . . . The clan at the center of Jean Thompson’s spare, startlingly resonant new novel remain inextricably linked to the place that made them, even as they reach for lives richer in both geography and purpose. But even minor characters receive the full attention of the author’s prodigious talents; each one is drawn so vividly that they never feel less than utterly real.” —Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

***

So that’s my week, past and upcoming…I hope you will stop by and share your own tidbits.