Mailbox Madness and Miscellaneous Malarky

How's that title for some Monday morning alliteration??! I haven't even had coffee today. I think a round of applause is in order. I also put up Valentine's Day stickies on my office window, so it's possible I've been body-snatched.

I don't usually participate in Mailbox Monday, but this past week has seen a noticeable deluge of books coming into my house. Lately, it seems that if I wish out loud on my blog or Twitter, a book magically appears in my house! Usually, it's thanks to a wonderful blogger or author who decide to be my book fairy.

I should also mention: Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia and is gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Mailbox Monday is hosted by MetroReader in February.


Find blurbs for each book near the end of this post!

If you haven't heard of Cinder by Marissa Meyer you may have experienced a recent head injury and a damaging case of the forgetfuls. It's EVERYWHERE. And it just so happens to look really really good. Cinderella + cyborg = kickass. Vasilly is kind and generous and sent her ARC along to me since she was done with it. 

Next, I was happily Tweeting about how much I want to try Eowyn Ivey's novel, The Snow Child, when BAM!!!  A woooonderful, quite popular author direct messaged and offered to send her ARC! Her exact words, "I don't usually give ARCs away, but I like putting books in the hands of bloggers." Right on! She remains nameless here because I don't know if she wants the world to know she's giving away her ARCs. I'm moving her book up in my reading queue, too. :D Very sweet indeed.

I also accepted two books for review recently. While I've been laying off of the review books these looked intriguing enough to add to my downsized TBR. I have a good relationship with the publishers and the pitches were very kind, well-thought, and seemed to actually have a clue what I prefer to read and blog! Huzzah!!! Is this progress?! I think it just might be!

White Horse is the first in a debut trilogy from Alex Adams (published by Atria). I'm picky about my post-apocalyptic novels, and after my undying love for The Passage, we'll see if this one can hold a candle. Crossing my fingers.

Picture the Dead by Adele Griffin looks weird-wonderful. I'm all about weird spirit photography and spiritualism and that kinda stuff. This one is published by Sourcebooks Fire for children and young readers. The illustrations in this one look great, and the book itself is beautiful.

Cinder blurb:
Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earths fate hinges on one girl. . . . Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. Shes a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsisters illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kais, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her worlds future.


The Snow Child blurb:
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

White Horse blurb: 


Thirty-year-old Zoe wants to go back to college. That’s why she cleans cages and floors at GeneTech. If she can keep her head down, do her job, and avoid naming the mice she’ll be fine. Her life is calm, maybe even boring, until the end of the world when the President of the United States announces that humans are no longer a viable species. Zoe starts running the moment she realizes everyone she loves is gone. On her trek she encounters characters both needy and nefarious: some human, some monster, and some uncertain beings altered by genetic mutation. Zoe comes to see that humanity is defined not by genetic code, but by soulful actions and choices.


Picture the Dead blurb: 
A ghost will find his way home. Jennie Lovell's life is the very picture of love and loss. First she is orphaned and forced to live at the mercy of her stingy, indifferent relatives. Then her fiance falls on the battlefield, leaving her heartbroken and alone. Jennie struggles to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, but is haunted by a mysterious figure that refuses to let her bury the past. When Jennie forms an unlikely alliance with a spirit photographer, she begins to uncover secrets about the man she thought she loved. With her sanity on edge and her life in the balance, can Jennie expose the chilling truth before someone-or something-stops her?

What landed in your house this week?? Come on, enable me just a bit more!

The Sunday Salon - A Mixed Bag Week

Happy Sunday morning, everyone! I have a breakfast casserole in the oven, a cup of coffee beside me, and a book open on the bed. I stayed up entirely too late finishing Ann Patchett's State of Wonder for my 2012 Tournament of Books personal reading challenge. I did have the luxury of sleeping until almost 9:00 this morning, and I almost never do that. I'm rested and ready for the day. I'll take some more time to read books and blog posts after I post assignments for my online classes. Fun fun fun. While today is slated to be relaxing, the earlier part of the week was not so great.

This past week was the most stressful I've had in a while. I mentioned in a blog post a while back that my job will eventually be going away. With that in mind, we had some very important visitors on campus one day this week, and while I do not have blood pressure problems in the least, their visit alone made my head feel like it was going to explode. Long story. Not a story for the blog, but it was suitably heavy to make me glad to see the end of the week.

My job is still secure for now--every day is business as usual--but it was still enough to take a toll on my writing and reading habits this week. The good news is that I've been poking around online, and there are some interesting prospects posted here and there. Not a ton of jobs, but a few that excite me.  I would like to get into a more significant position in the online education sector. If I could work from home I would soil myself with glee. Seriously. Cross your fingers.

The weekend has been much better. In fact, yesterday was super bookish. I met up with my former graduate school colleague and good buddy, TheOtherFeminist, for Chinese food and book talk. I pulled up at the restaurant a touch early and got a table for some reading. Fem came in a few minutes late. All told, we got the party started around noon and the next thing we knew we'd talked until 4:00!!! Any time we get together we have scads to discuss, and much of it is related to teaching and reading and literary theory and all that awesome stuff.

We started brainstorming a new anthology of short stories we're affectionately calling The Kickass, Bookgasmic Anthology of Undersung Short Stories. You'd buy it, right?! The whole idea is that most of the anthologies for teaching literature (and simply reading!) have the same old stuff in them. We started a list of lesser-known stories we think would blow professors' and students' skirts up. We also have a penchant for the twisted, FYI. *wink*

We also talked about what we've been reading lately and what's on the docket for later. And of course, there were recommendations, and iPhone e-mailing of recommendations. You know how it goes when book nuts gather. It's rare that I get to indulge in heavy book talk with a face-to-face buddy. We have plans to get together at a Real Bookstore soon and do it all again!

While the week started out rocky, it certainly ended strong. This coming week should be much more even keel (knock on wood). I hope your weekend is wrapping up right and you'll be off to a good start tomorrow.

What are you reading today?


**If you're interested in joining in The Sunday Salon, visit the Facebook page!

Madame Bovary, A Story of Really Miserable People

Yesterday sucked. It actually wasn't the day's fault, but there were meetings with bigwigs and people-stress and daycare WTFery and just ridiculousness. I'm glad yesterday is over and I can enjoy today -- a Friday filled with afternoon and evening time to read and grade papers. Well, it's all good except the paper grading part. I have a class this afternoon, but they're working on a project for the majority of the time in class, so it should work in my favor.

Getting beyond the crapfest that was yesterday...as most of you know, Heather and I did a buddy read of Gustave Flaubert's much-drooled-upon, Madame Bovary. Many of those lists of best books say this is the second best book in the stratosphere right after Anna Karenina. I haven't read Anna K. so I have no idea about the ranking, but I'm also a little curious as to how in the world this became the second best book in history? I wasn't included on that vote.

This was not a bad book. Not bad at all, in fact. Like most Realist novels, it's filled with characters who are annoying and who are tortured (sometimes) to death. In interesting and unique ways. My experience before MB was largely limited to Theodore Dreiser's American realist novel, Sister Carrie, which came WAY after MB. But the basic tenets are the same: characters who have a icky lot in life. Done!

Here's a short synopsis:
Emma marries Charles Bovary who she initially thinks is quite fine enough to save her from living with her father. After she's married she's bored and begins to think Charles is icky. She has an overblown sense of the romantic from reading lots of novels that have filled her head with nonsense (damn reading women!!!). Misery leads to adultery and lots of stupidity and she's miserable and adulterous for a long, long time. And stuff.

First off, I did not hate Emma Bovary as much as the average reader. She was quite a silly woman, bored, needed more manual labor to keep her busy (as is once proposed in the novel). She is certainly the epitome of selfishness by the time it all goes to hell, but I still didn't hate her. This book reminds me of the same themes at work in the short short story, "The Story of an Hour," by Kate Chopin (two pages vs. 400 in this novel). Women had no choice but to marry if they were going to have anything in life, and they often ended up stranded and miserable. Given, her husband loved her but she was not fulfilled in a number of ways. Does it make her actions right? NO. Was she a goober? YES. But I don't hate her. There were a lot of issues of circumstance that set off a chain reaction of gargantuan proportions.

The readability of this novel really surprised me. I downloaded the Eleanor Marx-Aveling translation because it was cheap, and then I discovered that it's largely considered the worst translation of anything ever. BUT, despite that, it was still a quick read. We zipped through in a week. If Lydia Davis's translation is considered the best thing ever, then I want to read it one day to see what all the fuss is about. Note: Marx-Aveling was THAT Marx's daughter. Yep! Daughter of Karl Marx did the first English translation of this novel. High five!

Like any red-blooded 30-something, I was also initially interested in the scandal that went along with this novel. It's supposed to be right up there with Lady Chatterley in the "holy shit this is scandalous" category. But I have news for all of you pervs out there: there are no jiggling loins or heaving bosoms in this novel. I know, I know...I was disappointed, too. There was one very shady foray in an arbor and one bouncing carriage and that's it. That's all I've got. There's a big difference between 1857 and 1928 in the writerly sexuala department. Still, I know why it blew people's hair back in the 1850s. I get it.

 I am glad glad glad this was my first classic of 2012. It was a great reading experience (though I still don't think it's the second best book in the universe). It was even cooler to read it with Heather and gossip about Emma Bovary everyday. That little tart sure does give a reader food for thought.

Rating:

Snuggle -- Skewer

Pub. Date: 1857
Publisher: No idea
Format: E-book
Source: Purchased by me.

It's Just the Truth!

VERY IMPORTANT VISITORS on campus today. And my head hurts. And I don't feel interesting. Maybe tomorrow. 

Randomness

Greyson woke me up at 5:30 this morning, and I don't have to be at work until 9:00, so I thought I'd stop in to say good morning. The coffee is flowing, but actual thoughts haven't congealed yet. Alas, you get randomness in all its glory.

I turned on the Cooking Channel this morning, and I'm faced with a very young, clean-shaven chef Aarón Sanchez from 2002. He wasn't cute or charming back then. 

My child, who was formerly terrified of the bathtub has now come to terms with bathing outside of the sink. It's all thanks to an inflatable duck named Howard (apropos, yes?). I now have a hard time getting him out of the bathroom as he enjoys standing at the side of the tub, waving, saying, "HI HOWARD!" over and over again.

I have a bad case of the Too-Many-Good-Books-To-Read. I'm LOVING State of Wonder by Ann Patchett and I'm moving through it at a good clip. I also have other Tournament of Books books staring at me from the sidelines. Along with a copy of The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. They're all calling to me at once! Oh, and an e-book copy of Swamplandia by Karen Russell came in from the library. Ugg!

I love my Keurig coffee maker. LOVE!

I went to my favorite independent bookstore in the universe this past weekend. a Real Bookstore, in Fairview, TX! They have a great cafe, which I've mentioned here before because it sells booze. Books and booze! But they also sell yummy pastries and panini sandwiches and whatnot. I was about to gnaw my own leg off so I purchased this (click to embiggen)...

And it is a sandwich which will change your life. It's called the "Three's Company Grilled Cheese." It's a panini filled with white cheddar, gruyere, and goat cheese, and it is a force to be reckoned with. It's served with a side of raspberry jam to cut some of the richness of the cheese and a healthy helping of Kettle potato chips. OMG, y'all. This grilled cheese DID change my life. I won't eat it often, or I'd blow up to the size of the store, but it was so, SO tasty You can read more about it in the Dallas Business Journal. That's how good this sandwich really is!

I should also mention that I ordered a red velvet whoopie pie to go along with my sandwich. I had to save it for later because I was so full of melty, gooey cheese, but it was beyond fabulous. So tasty. If you haven't been to a Real Bookstore and you live in the Dallas area (or ya know, within five or six hours), go to this store. Just do it. 25% discount for educators, too. Just sayin'. 

Finally, just because he's cute...