Mailbox Monday, Nov 26

Happy Mailbox Monday!  After last week's insane haul, this week's arrivals were far more moderate -- but equally awesome! What did you get this week? 

For Review

Book title: The Wanderers by Edward Belfar

Book cover: The Real Jane Austen by Paula Byrne Book cover: The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma

Book cover: The Boy in the Snow by M.j. McGrath Book cover: Little Women in India by Jane Nardin

Comments

  1. The NYRB looks neat, as does the Austen book! Enjoy!

    ReplyDelete

  2. I got the Jane Austen book too..can't wait to read it.

    Kimberlee
    http://girllostinabook.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete

  3. Ooh, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards catches my eye! I hope they're all fabulous!

    ReplyDelete

  4. I've got a copy of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards staring down at me, too. Haven't started it yet...

    ReplyDelete

  5. Great mailbox. All of those are new to me. Looking forward to your review of the Jane Austen book.

    ReplyDelete

  6. Jealous you got The Real Jane Austen! I can't wait to see what you think of it. Hope you had a great holiday.

    ReplyDelete

  7. So excited about The Real Jane Austen that I'm thinking I might just start this afternoon! Yay for some new JA-related reading. Can't get enough.

    ReplyDelete

  8. Little Women in India? Interesting.

    The Real Jane Austen catches my eye, because of course it does. I'll be curious to hear about that one. I always want to read every biography, but they all seem to say the same things, because there isn't all that much known, since she had Cassandra burn so many letters (or did she burn them? - either way they were burned).

    ReplyDelete

  9. The real Jane Austen sounds good. I have to read up on it

    ReplyDelete

  10. All new to me! Nice mailbox today Audra! Lots of stuff in there I might like to read. I will be waiting to hear how they go for you!

    ReplyDelete

  11. The Real Jane Austen caught my eye, of course! ;)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weekend reads and birthday month...

Image
My wife's birthday was last weekend, which coincided with the ten year anniversary of our meeting! She got everything she wanted, from a homemade gourmet dinner to marathon-ing the Star Wars movies because I had never seen them. But we have a tradition in our family of celebrating the 'birthday month' which means my wife gets a few more weekends of fancy dinners made by me and dictating how we spend our weekends.  (Non-negotiable will be disassembling our Christmas tree, which we've obviously put off for weeks, oops!)

This weekend I'm reading Peter Swanson's The Girl with a Clock for a Heart. (The picture is from last night, not this morning -- I only do champagne before noon, and only on weekends!)

What are you reading this weekend?
Read more

Book Review: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Image
First line: Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.

I had to grit my teeth to get through this book. (All 209 pages.)

I'm ashamed to admit this since a surprising number of folks online and in person have cited this novella as one of their favorite books, but I found everything about this brief read to be agonizing -- the plot, the narrative style, the characters -- it and I just did not connect.

I went in expecting to love this book given its reputation and subject matter. Achebe depicts the story of a Nigeria broken by white colonialism; our hero is deeply flawed and stubbornly committed, living in a world with problems triply complicated by the unnecessary influence of white colonizers. Achebe's narrative style is straight-forward and clear, even as he articulates a world deeply foreign to modern audiences.

I suspect I didn't understand this book; I'm also not a huge fan of tragedies (I loathe Hamlet) so Okonkwo as a character didn'…
Read more

Book Review: Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel

Image
First line: --Central, this is Lapetus. Target in sight.

This is the final novel in the Themis Files trilogy (I reviewed the previous two novels, Sleeping Giants and Waking Gods.) 

I'm not going to summarize the plot because I don't want to end up spoiling anything. As a concluding novel, it did everything I needed a final book to do: wrapped up plot threads, answered the mysteries, and provided some final flash bang.

As with his previous novels, I think some of Neuvel's characterizations are thin -- no doubt because the story is told through transcripts and journal entries -- and it left me a little impatient with the story.

These were fast reads, so if you want a Michael Bay-esque summer action flick in a book, this trilogy will do it.

Title:Only Human
Author: Sylvain Neuvel
Genre: Fiction (Sci Fi / Speculative / Mecha / Aliens / Parenthood / Social Commentary / Warfare)
Publisher/Publication Date: Del Rey (5/1/2018)
Source: Edelweiss

Read more