Mailbox Monday #749
Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.
It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.
Emma, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.
Here’s what I received:
My Dear Comrades by Sunu P. Chandy from Literary Hill BookFest for Gaithersburg Book Festival consideration.
In this poetry collection, Sunu P. Chandy includes stories about her experiences as a woman, civil rights attorney, parent, partner, daughter of South Asian immigrants, and member of the LGBTQ community. These poems cover themes ranging from immigration, social justice activism, friendship loss, fertility challenges, adoption, caregiving, and life during a pandemic. Sunu’s poems provide some resolve, some peace, some community, amidst the competing notions of how we are expected to be in the world, especially when facing a range of barriers. Sunu’s poems provide company for many who may be experiencing isolation through any one of these experiences and remind us that we are not, in fact, going it alone. Whether the experience is being disregarded as a woman of color attorney, being rejected for being queer, losing a most treasured friendship, doubting one’s romantic partner or any other form of heartbreak, Sunu’s poems highlight the human requirement of continually starting anew. These poems remind us that we can, and we will, rebuild.
Yours, Creature by Jessica Cuello for Gaithersburg Book Festival consideration.
Yours, Creature is composed of epistolary poems in the voice of Mary Shelley. Often written as missives to her famous literary mother, Wollstonecraft, the poems address months, years, and her own monstrous creation as they contend with exile, transience, and desire. These poems ask us to imagine the physical elements of Shelley’s existence in language that is both luminous and visceral. This is not a book that simply recreates a past, but one that transcends time as it threads together the loss and violence that history has asked women to suppress. The poems recognize the unspoken pairing of scarcity and creation; they explore how the monstrous is born out of rejection. Yours, Creature responds to a literary and historical narrative, but the poems exist as lyric, singing of the pleasure of creation and its transformative power.
What did you receive?
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica (audio)
Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 6+ hrs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, narrated by Joseph Balderrama, is a translated work in which a dystopian world of cannibalism emerges after a virus makes all other meat inedible. Marcos is the main character who is the supervisor of the local “specialty meat” plant. His father has dementia and he is paying for all his care, but his wife left him and his only child is dead.
Much of this book is stomach-churning, and while I see it as a commentary on the meat production industry and the industry/money driven industry’s influence over government policy. It’s interesting to me that the author chose this topic after I learned that Argentina is one of the largest meat consumers in the world. Marcos is so detached from his family, his emotions, his interactions with others, and while the gift he is given later on is supposed to make us believe he is reconnecting with his humanity, I don’t believe it. I was unconvinced. The ending wasn’t a shock.
I can see how this would be a good book club selection because there are a number of themes to explore and discuss, but the characters were very flat and didn’t evolve much throughout. Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica is an odd dystopian novel set in Argentina where cannibalism is the norm out of necessity, but little is examined about the moral or ethical challenges of this decision. What’s worse is the conspiracies about it being a government hoax are never explored.
RATING: Tercet
About the Author:
Mailbox Monday #748
Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.
It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.
Emma, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.
Here’s what I received:
Holly by Stephen King, purchased from Audible.
Stephen King’s Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Audiences have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.
When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.
Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.
Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.
What did you receive?
Literary Hill BookFest 2023
What: Literary Hill BookFest 2023 Who: 40+ Capitol Hill authors, booksellers, and literary organizations When: THIS WEEKEND! Sunday, September 17, 2023, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Where: The North Hall at Eastern Market, Capitol Hill Why: To showcase local authors and Capitol Hill-based booksellers, publishers, and other literary organizations and celebrate the Hill as a […]
Dancehall by Tim Stobierski
Source: the poet Paperback, 90 pgs. I am an Amazon Affiliate Dancehall by Tim Stobierski, touring with Poetic Book Tours, is a collection in a five-act play format with poems that crescendo into an unforgettable love story. Stobierski’s poems are tender and full of emotion. In Act One, you’ll be enchanted by “Just as Sparrows,” […]
The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand (audio)
Source: Purchased Audiobook, 12+ hrs. I am an Amazon Affiliate The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand, narrated by Erin Bennett, is a rich person’s vacation but what anchors this weekend in reality is the relationships between these different women in Hollis Shaw’s life and the fractured relationship Shaw has with her daughter, Caroline. A tragic […]
Remembering 9/11
(Photo credit: Lerone Pieters on Unsplash) Sept. 11, 2001, was a journalist’s nightmare. Working in an office and waiting on copyedits from a client in New York City that day was not only surreal, but also devastating. Realizing that people you may have never met in person but worked with daily were no longer at […]
