Mailbox Monday

After reading everyone else's Mailbox Mondays for awhile now, I finally had enough books (in other words, more than none) to join in on the meme hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. So here is what I received last week in the mail (Feb 16 - 20th):

Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom
A World Never Made by James LePore
The first 6 books in the 'Kitty' series by Carrie Vaughn:
Kitty and the Midnight Hour
Kitty Goes to Washington
Kitty Takes a Holiday
Kitty and the Silver Bullet
Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
Kitty Raises Hell
The Local News by Miriam Gershow

Review: THE LAST TESTAMENT by Sam Bourne

After a year in Washington, DC, Maggie Costello is smothering under the control of her boyfriend, Edward, and her job as a divorce mediator. Until Washington she had been another kind of mediator, one involved in big stakes in the high-pressure world of international politics. When the US government needed someone to bring two opposing sides together, they called Maggie. And it worked well until something went very wrong and real people paid the price with their lives and so she ended up in Washington with Edward mediating fights between couples instead of countries.

One morning Maggie receives a visit by a government agent who convinces her to return to her first natural talent and she quickly finds herself in the midst of a tense standoff between Israel and Palestine. When a murder of a prominent right-wing activist stalls the talks, Maggie steps in to investigate. What she finds leads her on a spine-tingling, intensive hunt for the murderer and where at times she becomes the hunted. Along the way Maggie has the help of Uri Guttman, a man who is trying to discover what role his father played in the sensitive mid-east peace process.

A blurb on the back cover of this novel says it is “The biggest challenger to Dan Brown’s crown”. I can see why. It’s similar in that there are two characters who follow the trail of an ancient artifact knowing that what it reveals will change the course of history. And like Dan Brown’s book, The Last Testament also has plenty of short chapters with most having cliff-hangers at the end of them. But the similarity ends there. It does after all take place in the Middle East. I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that if you liked the Da Vinci Code you will also enjoy this book.

I WON!!!

I'm very excited that I won The Little Giant of Aberdeen County from Avis! I love contests - well, especially when I win them, which is not all that often. Thanks Avis! I’m really looking forward to reading this book. It’s got such great reviews. You can read Avis’s review of this book here.

Review: REPLAY by Ken Grimwood

Jeff Wintson dies at work of an apparent heart attack at the age of 43 while talking to his wife on the phone. She had been telling him what it was that they needed but he died before she had a chance to say exactly what that was. No matter though, because as he lay slumped over his desk, dying, he knew what she’d been about to say; something mundane like picking up milk or bread.

Jeffs wakes to the realization that he hadn’t died after all; he must be in a hospital because he was thinking he couldn’t breathe. Realizing that his head was deep into his sheets, he turned and looked at the room around him. That’s when he discovers he is back in college and eighteen years old again. The story follows Jeff through life again – hindsight does actually help him in his second chance but, as he learns, it can also hurt.

This book is a page turner – you can’t help wanting to know what is going to happen next and how it will all turn out in the end. The possibilities of what Jeff could accomplish with the opportunity of having a second chance are intriguing to say the least.

Review" ORYX AND CRAKE by Margaret Atwood

Barely surviving in a devastated and de-populated world, a man called Snowman recalls the events of his life that have led to what he is now: a shadow of his former self, slowly starving to death. Snowman thinks about his best friend Crake, an intellectual (otherwise known as a geek), who, despite his perplexing and secretive manner, was nevertheless on the road to greatness. Oryx, the only person of his generation Snowman could truly love, seemed so unreachable. His mother, a riddle, vanished, and though he tried to put her memory behind him, he continued searching for her for years. His father, cold and distant, considered his only son an afterthought.

As snowman searches through his memory, he looks for clues, the what ifs, to help him understand how the world changed so suddenly. He ponders how if he’d only read the signs, had not ignored the portentous dropped phrase from Crake here and there, he might have known what was coming. But then what? Could he have stopped it? Now all he has for company are the Crakers, a race of beings who are dependent on Snowman for answers to their questions about a world that they were born into, a world innocent of war, famine, violence and all the other outrages and misfortunes the human race brought upon itself.

Review: UNLESS by Carol Shields

Fear of the unknown suddenly plays a significant part in Reta Winters’s life as she struggles to cope with her eldest daughter’s odd behaviour. This nineteen year old woman, Norah, abandons her life – university and her boyfriend as well as her parents and two sisters to sit on a street corner in downtown Toronto begging. She wears a sign around her neck with the word ‘goodness’ written on it. No one in Norah’s family, including her boyfriend, knows why she is doing this. They try to talk to her and Reta does attempt to forcibly remove Norah from her perch, and fails miserably when her daughter begins screaming. Reta, in dismay and embarrassment, flees in her car, alone.

Reta’s ruminations on her daughter’s behaviour causes her to reflect on her own experiences dealing with the male-dominated book publishing world. She sees in Norah’s stance an acting out of her own frustrations in dealing with a society that relegates women to an afterthought. As Reta and her family try to carry on their day to day activities in view of Norah’s self-placement in society, Reta undertakes a series of letters to various male writers for columns, reviews and in one case, an obituary, thereby soothing herself for the wrongs she is feeling. She never mails the letters and in fact, signs them with a variety of pseudonyms, signaling her intentions not to send them out.

This is not a book for someone who enjoys fast-paced reads but it is definitely thought-provoking.

Review: THE STUBBORN SEASON by Lauren B. Davis

October 1929 in Toronto was as desperate as anywhere else during the great depression. People lost everything when the market crashed, and devastated, some even committed suicide. The lucky ones were not homeless, but lived a frightened existence anyway – often believing it was only a matter of time before they too joined the masses riding the rails.

Irene MacNeil is ten years old and does not quite understand the world depression, but she knows that something is not quite right in her own house. Her parents often argue and her mother, believing they’d missed the opportunity to invest when the time was right, harangues her father daily on missed chances. Margaret reads the papers religiously and as the news seems to get worse her mood mirrors the daily horrors so that in fact her mother and the world seem bent on the same disastrous ending. Her father, Douglas, prefers to ignore anything negative, and continues along as if nothing is wrong, telling his daughter not to worry, everything will be okay, all along finding his own relief in alcohol. Irene grows up in this atmosphere, where things don’t seem to get better until inevitably something happens that changes the lives of her family.

I can’t say that this is a happy story but it is a good one.

Review: SWEETSMOKE by David Fuller

Sweetsmoke, described on the cover as ‘a novel of the civil war’ is about the civil war, but it’s also very much about slavery, murder and justice.

I’ve read a few books about slavery and the stories of brutality are often echoes of the same terrible evil and the horrors suffered by many. This story adds another dimension. There are heart-wrenching tales of injustices, but what makes it different is the focus on the murder of a freed black woman and the efforts of a slave to discover her murderer. An additional flourish that gives this book an interesting perspective is that it takes place in 1862, during a raging civil war that most people at Sweetsmoke believe will end in a victory for thee south.

I don’t think I’m an adequate judge of whether the adversaries and obstacles faced by the protagonist, Cassius, are realistic, but I do know I really liked this book. Cassius is a very likable character and lives among others who are portrayed in shades of grey (except the children who are depicted as completely evil), as people really are. It’s interesting to note that the author did not use quotation marks when one of the slaves was speaking, as if what they had to say was of no importance compared to someone who was either freed or white.

When Cassius discovers that Emoline, a woman who cared for him when he needed it most, did not die accidentally, he decides to find her murderer - not an easy thing to do for a slave. Since Cassius’s job on the Sweetsmoke plantation is carpentry, he has a bit of leeway to move around, unlike most of the other slaves. While this allows him to do a bit of detective work it also lends itself to jealousy and resentment among the other slaves who feel he is favored by the plantation owner. The search for Emoline’s murderer leads Cassius away from Sweetsmoke and the further he gets, the closer he comes to the truth. Along this journey Cassius encounters traitors, slave traders and soldiers and sees first hand the terror of war.

I highly recommend this book – it is difficult to put down. I would like to thanks Lex at minibookexpo.com and Hyperion for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

Review: DAUGHTER OF MINE by Laura Fabiani

Tiziana Manoretti is a successful young engineering technologist who lives with her parents and leads a happy, active life until she discovers a long-held secret about her origins. She feels betrayed and angry, and decides to go on a trip to Italy, and specifically Gaeta, the village where she was born. There Tiziana hopes to find some answers and reflect on the revelations recently gleaned from her parents. While there she wastes no time in meeting new people and experiencing the local cuisine and culture.

This novel contains romance, suspense, humour and a hint of mystery. The chapters are fairly short and the plot moves along at a fair pace; it kept my interest. Occasionally, I found elements of the story a bit hard to believe but certainly not enough to hinder enjoyment of it. The characters are distinctive and well developed, and although I did find a few of the physical descriptions of the males slightly ‘cookie-cutter-ish’, the character of Giacomino (a man whose mother tries to find appropriate and newly arrived tourists to marry her son) lent quite a humorous touch. The descriptions of Naples, Rome and Gaeta were vivid, colourful and made reading the novel feel like one had recently visited the country. I also enjoyed reading about the local cuisine and life in Italy where

“…Italians sped, ran through red lights, and honked other drivers out of their way, hurrying along to jobs where service to the public was always in slow mode.”

Daughter of Mine is a charming, engaging novel complete with several twists and turns to keep the reader’s interest. Anticipation of what will happen next also keeps the pages turning and ends the story with a satisfying conclusion.

I'd like to thank the author for giving me the opportunity to read and review her book and I look forward to reading her next novel.

Review: MARLEY & ME by John Grogan

Anyone who has ever enjoyed the companionship of a pet will likely relate to some of the episodes described in this non-fiction book. The author started writing a month after his beloved Labrador retriever, Marley, died at the age of thirteen. John Grogan is a columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer and often worked Marley stories into his column. When his dog died he wrote about that too and said in an interview, “The day the column ran, nearly 800 Inquirer readers emailed or called. A typical day might bring 30 to 50 responses. That's when I knew I had a bigger story to tell.” Obviously other people could relate.

Marley was not just the worst dog, but also the best. The only predicatable thing about Marley was his unpredictability. John and Jenny Grogan decided to get a puppy not long after they were married – figuring that a dog would give them some idea what parenthood would be like. Of course the puppy grew up to be close to one hundred pounds of a constantly moving, pulling and running blur who would tear up the house in a terrified frenzy every time a thunderstorm hit. Living in Florida, the thunderstorm capital of the world, did not help John and Jenny’s furniture, sofa cushions, woodwork and just about anything else within reach become victims of Marley’s thunder phobia.

When the couple decided the time was right, they had their first child and in Marley’s world, the baby fit right in. Apparently dirty diapers were a special treat and Mr. Grogan describes the expression of pure heaven on Marley’s face whenever he came into contact with the diaper pail.

Marley did go to school to learn better manners and John was thrilled when Marley actually came 7th in his class (out of a class of 8) and was not expelled as he had been on their first attempt at training. John’s hopes for better behaviour were not even dampened when Marley happily ate his graduation certificate.

I very much enjoyed reading about Marley’s antics, but the story dragged a bit for me whenever it delved deeper into the author’s life. I was not so interested in that! I suppose I just couldn’t relate to this man but I could relate to having a dog like Marley. Mine was a black lab named Coal who once greeted me at the door once with her tail wagging and my long and very sharp bread knife sticking out of her mouth. At least she had hold of the handle part! I’m happy to report that after I was able to figure out how to get it away from her, there were no injuries.