Tuesday, January 3, 2012

The Best Day of the Year So Far...

I was so pleased today to get a visit from both the postman and the UPS man! No, it's not because I have a thing for men in uniform, it's because they both came bearing boxes with books! The first was our Christmas box from my mom - better late than never, and who cares if it didn't get here by Christmas, I believe in spreading out gift receiving. Although I'm making myself wait to open it until my lil' heart gets home from school, I just know there is a book in there for me! The second delivery was a 10 lb box. I've never been more excited to "put on" 10 lbs! :) The box from the retailer contained five books, my after Christmas present to myself! I took advantage of a half price sale, free shipping, a coupon and a membership discount and got five books, four hardbacks and one trade paper, for only $15!

The books I got in today are listed below, with a generic book review from the retailer, as I have not yet read the books.



"American Wife" by Curtis Sittenfeld (This is a book I watched fly off the shelves when I was working in a bookstore - always wanted to read it)

"From her husband's desk in the Oval Office, Alice Blackwell can contemplate the deep incongruities of her own life. How, for example, did a quiet, bookish girl from small-town Wisconsin become involved with the gregarious, charismatic Charlie Blackwell? Their politics, their backgrounds couldn't have been more different: Charlie was the carefree, even boisterous son of a wealthy Republican family; she was a registered Democrat who paid her bills with the modest salary of a school librarian. Nothing had trained her for her job as a First Lady and certainly nothing had prepared her for the painful controversies of her husband's second term. A riveting novel by the author of Prep and Man of My Dreams."





"New York" by Edward Rutherfurd

"Edward Rutherfurd celebrates America’s greatest city in a rich, engrossing saga, weaving together tales of families rich and poor, native-born and immigrant—a cast of fictional and true characters whose fates rise and fall and rise again with the city’s fortunes. From this intimate perspective we see New York’s humble beginnings as a tiny Indian fishing village, the arrival of Dutch and British merchants, the Revolutionary War, the emergence of the city as a great trading and financial center, the convulsions of the Civil War, the excesses of the Gilded Age, the explosion of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the trials of World War II, the near demise of New York in the 1970s and its roaring rebirth in the 1990s, and the attack on the World Trade Center. A stirring mix of battle, romance, family struggles, and personal triumphs, New York: The Novel gloriously captures the search for freedom and opportunity at the heart of our nation’s history."





"Pirate Latitudes" by Michael Crichton

"The Caribbean, 1665. Port Royal, Jamaica is a cutthroat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses. For Captain Charles Hunter, there’s a living to be made, and gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking.

Word in port is that the galleon El Trinidad is awaiting repairs in a nearby, heavily fortified, harbor. Hunter assembles a crew of ruffians to infiltrate the enemy island and commandeer El Trinidad, along with its fortune in gold. The raid is as perilous as the bloodiest tales of island legend and Hunter will lose more than one man before he even sets foot on foreign shores, where dense jungle and the firepower of Spanish infantry stand between him and the treasure . . ."





"The Disorder of Longing" by Natasha Bauman

"When her husband arrives home carrying a crate of colorful orchids, Ada Caswell Pryce thinks he is bringing her a gift, a peace offering during an unhappy time in their marriage; little does she know how much these strange looking flowers are going to change her life.

By Boston standards of the 1890's, Ada is not a good wife. Strong-willed and beautiful, she longs for the days at university when she was free to be herself. Her husband Edward is intent on curbing her wild behavior, but she thwarts him at every turn — she drinks wine with the housekeepers, gives feminist books to her maid, and sneaks out for midnight horseback rides along the Charles River.

To treat Ada's “hysteria,” Edward restricts her daily activities and her relationships, then carefully choreographs her sexuality. Unable to bear another day of her stultifying and demeaning existence, Ada secretly plots ways to leave. Ultimately, it is her husband's all-consuming passion for collecting rare orchids that provides Ada with a daring opportunity for escape."





"The Year of the Flood" by Margaret Atwood

"Margaret Atwood's novel somehow manages to be both futuristic and primordial. Set in a post-apocalyptic age when most of humanity has been obliterated, The Year of the Flood tracks its two rare, perhaps unique female survivors. Ren, a supple young trapeze dancer who is imprisoned inside a sex club and Toby, an ex-counter clerk who has become a follower of Adam One, the religious leader who predicted the catastrophic natural disaster. Beyond this mismatched trio are a host of bizarre walk-ons and sideshow characters, not to mention an ominous police state waiting in the wings."





As I said in the beginning of the post, I didn't write these book reviews, as I have just received them and haven't read them yet, but they seem like really great books, books I'm drawn to by both the reviews and the cover art. I'm so thrilled to be holding five new books! It makes an already good day even better!

If you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear from you and hear what you thought about them! I hope you are having a wonderful third day of 2012!

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