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The Best of 2013 List…

In Descending Order (links to the reviews included):
  1. Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir by Beth Kephart
  2. The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
  3. Imperfect Spiral by Debbie Levy
  4. Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman
  5. The Time Between by Karen White
  6. Survival Skills: Stories by Jean Ryan
  7. Unexplained Fevers by Jeannine Hall Gailey
  8. Lotería by Mario Alberto Zambrano
  9. Solving the World’s Problems by Robert Lee Brewer
  10. The Scabbard of Her Throat by Bernadette Geyer
  11. The Neruda Case by Roberto Ampuero, translated by Carolina De Robertis
  12. Six Sisters’ Stuff: Family Recipes, Fun Crafts, and So Much More
Here are my honorable mentions for this year, in descending order (links to the reviews included):
  1. The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein
  2. Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent by Beth Kephart
  3. Joyland by Stephen King
  4. Seduction by M.J. Rose
  5. Black Aperture by Matt Rasmussen
What books made your list of favorites this year?

Mailbox Monday #219

Even though my Mailbox Mondays have been on hiatus for the most part this month, I wanted to share all the books I’ve received, some of which already were reviewed.

Mailbox Monday (click the icon to check out the new blog) has gone on tour since Marcia at A Girl and Her Books, formerly The Printed Page passed the torch. May’s host is 4 the LOVE of BOOKS.

The meme allows bloggers to share what books they receive in the mail or through other means over the past week.

Just be warned that these posts can increase your TBR piles and wish lists.

Here’s what I received for review:

1.  Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris, which came unexpectedly from Little & Brown and may be passed along to someone else.

From the unique perspective of David Sedaris comes a new book of essays taking his readers on a bizarre and stimulating world tour. From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveler’s experiences. Whether railing against the habits of litterers in the English countryside or marveling over a disembodied human arm in a taxidermist’s shop, Sedaris takes us on side-splitting adventures that are not to be forgotten.

2.  Pain, Parties, Work by Elizabeth Winder for review with TLC Book Tours.

In May of 1953, a twenty-one-year-old Plath arrived in New York City, the guest editor of Mademoiselle’s annual College Issue. She lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended the ballet, went to a Yankee game, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She was supposed to be having the time of her life. But what would follow was, in Plath’s words, twenty-six days of pain, parties, and work, that ultimately changed the course of her life.

 

3.  Three-Ring Rascals: The Show Must Go On! by Kate Klise and illustrated by M. Sarah Klise from Anna.

Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls!

Step right up and hear the amazing tale of Sir Sidney’s Circus.

Listen to how Sir Sidney, a kindly old circus owner, needed a rest.

Read and weep when Sir Sidney leaves the circus in the hands of a big mean baddie.

Shriek with terror as Barnabas Brambles cracks his whip at Elsa the elephant.

Cry in horror when Mr. Brambles tries to sell Leo the lion to a zoo.

Hide your eyes as the Famous Flying Banana Brothers perform death-defying feats to get the circus train to the show on time!

Can they do it? Will they make it? They better, because THE SHOW MUST GO ON!

Black and white line drawings throughout.

4.  The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein for review with TLC Book Tours (2 copies — one will be passed on to someone).

In this evocative and thrilling epic novel, fifteen-year-old Yoshi Kobayashi, child of Japan’s New Empire, daughter of an ardent expansionist and a mother with a haunting past, is on her way home on a March night when American bombers shower her city with napalm—an attack that leaves one hundred thousand dead within hours and half the city in ashen ruins. In the days that follow, Yoshi’s old life will blur beyond recognition, leading her to a new world marked by destruction and shaped by those considered the enemy: Cam, a downed bomber pilot taken prisoner by the Imperial Japanese Army; Anton, a gifted architect who helped modernize Tokyo’s prewar skyline but is now charged with destroying it; and Billy, an Occupation soldier who arrives in the blackened city with a dark secret of his own. Directly or indirectly, each will shape Yoshi’s journey as she seeks safety, love, and redemption.

5.  Emily & Herman by John J. Healey, which I received for review from Arcade Publishing.

The manuscript of this novel was discovered by John J. Healey in a box left by his grandfather, Professor Vincent P. Healey, after his death. This engaging work of fiction is a romantic account in which four iconic figures of American Letters play a leading role.

In the summer of 1851 Herman Melville was finishing Moby Dick on his family farm in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Surrounded by his mother, sisters and pregnant wife, it was a calm and productive season until his neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne lured him to Amherst. There they met twenty-year-old Emily Dickinson and her brother Austin. On a whim the two distinguished authors invited the Dickinson siblings to accompany them on a trip to Boston and New York. In Manhattan they met journalist Walt Whitman and William Johnson, a runaway slave, and it was there, despite their efforts to control it, that Emily and Herman fell in love.

This, for the first time, is their story.

6.  Why Photographers Commit Suicide by Mary McCray from the poet for review.

Why Photographers Commit Suicide explores, in small narratives and lyrical poems, the American idea of Manifest Destiny, particularly as it relates to the next frontier—space exploration. Mary McCray examines the scientific, psychological and spiritual frontiers enmeshed in our very human longing for space, including our dream of a space station on Mars. These poems survey what we gain and what we lose as we progress towards tomorrow, and how we can begin to understand the universal melancholy we seem to cherish for what we leave behind, the lives we have already lived. McCray unearths our feelings about what it means to move ahead and stake out new territory, and what it means to be home.

7.  The Fact of the Matter by Sally Keith, which I purchased from Novel Places.

Moving from the mundane to the profound, first through observation of fact and matter, then shifting perspective, engaging a deeper sense of self, these poems re-imagine things great and small, making us care deeply about the world around us. In this cultivated and intricately crafted collection, Sally Keith shows the self as a crucible of force—that which compels us to exert ourselves upon the world, and meanwhile renders us vulnerable to it. Force by which a line unfurls—as in Robert Smithson’s colossal Spiral Jetty—or leads with forward motion—a train hurdling along the west-reaching railroad; Edweard Muybridge’s photographic reels charting animal and human locomotion. With poems remarkable in their clarity, captivating in their matter-of-factness, Keith examines the impossible and inevitable privacy of being a person in the world, meanwhile negotiating an inexorable pull toward the places we call home—one we alternately try and fail to resist.

8.  Trace by Eric Pankey, which I purchased from Novel Places.

His arresting ninth collection of poems, Eric Pankey’s Trace locates itself at a threshold between faith and doubt—between the visible and the invisible, the say-able and the ineffable, the physical and the metaphysical. Also a map of the poet’s journey into a deep depression, these poems confront one man’s struggle to overcome depression’s smothering weight and presence. And with remarkable clarity and complexity, Trace charts the poet’s attempt to be inspired, to breathe again, to give breath and life to words. Ever solemn, ever existential, Pankey’s poems find us at our most vulnerable, the moment when we as humans—believers and nonbelievers alike—must ultimately pause to question the uncertain fate of our souls.

9.  Miss Plastique by Lynn Levin, which I received from the poet for review.

Miss Plastique, the fourth full-length poetry collection by Lynn Levin, invites the reader into a world of female bravado in which Miss Plastique and her many selves rant, fret, joke, fall in love, dress up, and do their hair. Poems in this collection first appeared in Boulevard, Artful Dodge, Hunger Mountain, Connecticut Review, Knockout, Nerve Cowboy, and other places. Lynn Levin, a poet known for her eclecticism, humor, and range of poetic styles, is the author of the previous poetry collections Fair Creatures of an Hour, a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Imaginarium, a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award; and A Few Questions about Paradise (all from Loonfeather Press). Her craft of poetry book, Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (with Valerie Fox) is forthcoming from Texture Press in 2013. Lynn Levin is also a writer and literary translator. She has received nine Pushcart Prize nominations, two grants from the Leeway Foundation, and Garrison Keillor has read her work on his radio show The Writer’s Almanac. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Levin has lived in the Philadelphia area since 1980. She is the 1999 Bucks County, Pa. poet laureate and currently teaches at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania. Advance praise for Miss Plastique: Miss Plastique is a busy girl: giving it to her enemy in stiletto heels, giving it up to an Elvis impersonator, thumbing a ride across Texas. She has turned from the mirror and can’t look back. She’s sexy and seductive and refuses to be pinned down; she’s silk so fluid you could drink her-read her instead, but watch she doesn’t explode in your hands. -Meg Kearney, author of Home By Now

10. Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent by Beth Kephart, illustrated by William Sulit, a surprise from my dear author friend.

Flavored by the oddities of historic personalities and facts, Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent is set in Bush Hill, Philadelphia, 1871—home to the Baldwin Locomotive Works and a massive, gothic prison. Acclaimed writer Beth Kephart captures the rhythms and smells of an extraordinary era as William Quinn and his Ma, Essie, grapple with life among terrible accidents, miraculous escapes, and shams masquerading as truth.

11.  Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence by David Samuel Levinson, unexpectedly from the publisher Algonquin.

Catherine Strayed is living a quiet, un-
remarkable life in a secluded college town following the mysterious death of her husband, a promising writer whose death may have been an accident, a suicide, or perhaps even a murder. When her former mentor (and onetime lover)—a powerful critic who singlehandedly destroyed her late husband’s chance for success—takes a teaching job at the college, Catherine’s world threatens to collapse. For with him has come his latest protégé, an exotic young woman named Antonia Lively. Antonia’s debut  novel has become a literary sensation—but it is, in fact, an almost factual retelling of 
a terrible crime that she relates without 
any concern for the impact its publication will have on the lives of those involved.  As Antonia insinuates herself into Catherine’s life, mysterious and frightening things start to happen, because unbeknownst to Catherine, the younger woman intends to plunder her own dark, regrettable past—and the unsolved death of her husband—for her next literary triumph.

12. Beautiful Decay by Sylvia Lewis, which came unexpectedly from Running Press, though may be appropriate for some near-teenager I know….

Things have a way of falling apart around Ellie Miller. Literally. With a touch that rots, she keeps everyone at a distance—for others’ safety as much as her own comfort.

When newcomer Nate MacPherson makes it his mission to get close to Ellie, she does her best to steer clear. But as Nate reveals an unusual ability of his own, Ellie recognizes a kindred spirit who could accept her for who she is . . . if she lets him.

As family secrets unravel, Ellie will have to discover the beauty within her reach in order to save the ones she loves.

13.  The Look of Love by Bella Andre from Meryl Moss Media unexpectedly — this will likely be passed on to someone else.

Chloe Peterson has vowed never to make the mistake of trusting a man again. Her reasons are as vivid as the bruises on her cheek. So when her car skids off a wet country road straight into a ditch, she’s convinced the gorgeous guy who rescues her must be too good to be true.

As a successful international photographer, Chase Sullivan has his pick of beautiful women. He’s satisfied with his life—until he finds Chloe and her totaled car on the side of the road in Napa Valley.

With every loving look—and every sinfully sweet caress—the attraction between them sizzles, and Chloe can’t help but wonder if she’s met the man who may be the exception to her rule….

14.  A Half Forgotten Song by Katherine Webb from HarperCollins for review.

In Half Forgotten Song, fourteen-year-old Mitzy Hatcher’s lonely life on the wild Dorset coast is changed forever when renowned artist Charles Aubrey arrives to summer there with his exotic mistress and daughters.  Mitzy develops a bond with the Aubrey household, gradually becoming Charles’s muse. Over the next three summers, a powerful love is kindled in her that grows from childish infatuation to something far more complex.  Years later, a young man in an art gallery looks at a hastily drawn portrait and wonders at its intensity. The questions he asks lead him to a Dorset village and to the truth about those fevered summers in the 1930s.

15.  The Keeper of Secrets by Julie Thomas from HarperCollins/William Morrow for review.

Beautiful and mysterious, The Keeper of Secrets by Julie Thomas follows a priceless violin across generations—from WWII to Stalinist Russia to the gilded international concert halls of today—and reveals the loss, love, and secrets of the families who owned it.   In 1939 Berlin, 14-year-old Simon Horowitz’s world is stirred by his father’s 1742 Guarneri del Gesu violin. When Nazis march across Europe and Simon is sent to Dachau, he finds unexpected kindness, and a chance to live.   In the present day, orchestra conductor Rafael Gomez finds himself inspired by Daniel Horowitz, a 14-year-old violin virtuoso who refuses to play. When Rafael learns that the boy’s family once owned a precious violin believed to have been lost forever, Rafael seizes the power of history and discovers a family story like no other.

What did you receive?

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein chronicles Yoshi Kobayashi’s life before, during, and after WWII, with a particular emphasis on the Tokyo fire bombings that preceded the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Billy Reynolds, whose family lives in Tokyo before the war, is a sensitive young boy who loves his new camera, and adores taking photos of Yoshi, family, friends, and more.  Cam Richards and Lacy Robertson are American college students who meet and quickly fall in love just as war is about to break out between America and Japan after Pearl Harbor, and their lives are torn apart by the war.  But ultimately, Epstein’s novel is about Yoshi and how the war tore apart a flourishing culture that once embraced American capitalism.

Not only will readers get an in-depth look at Tokyo before, during, and after the war, but they also see how war impacts not only Americans who once lived in Japan, but also those who were married to those who flew to avenge the deaths of so many in Hawaii.  Initially, readers will be duped into thinking Cam Richards and Lacy Robertson are the main protagonists — a testament to her ability to get readers to care even about secondary characters — but Yoshi is the heroine here, though there are big gaps in time that are not explored, which can leave a reader wanting more.  There is a moment near the end in particular when readers will wonder how Yoshi ends up playing piano at The American Club after the war when they last left her getting into a boat with an older man after the fire bombings, heading away from Tokyo.

“Almost by reflex Cam released the brakes and started to roll.  And then they were racing down that slippery white line, his heart pounding with the rhythmic throbbing of the twin Cyclones.  The dungaree blue of the sailors’ uniforms and the dirty gray of the ship’s island bled together as the Blonde Bombshell picked up speed.  As they passed by the signal officer (now safely flattened against the deck), Cam pulled on the yoke so hard that he felt his elbows crack, and saw the sky lunge towards him like a wet concrete wall.  They hit the ship’s edge in the after-trough of another white-topped crest, and as his plane’s nose plunged towards the water Cam’s gut plunged right along with it.”  (page 79)

Epstein is a phenomenal writer.  She captures intense moments so well, that it places the reader there with the characters.  Yoshi is a precocious young girl learning three languages thanks to her continental mother, but unfortunately, she’s held a little back by her attachment to her mother and her father’s old world conceptions of women in society.  She sees her father’s love of the new paradise, Manchuria, as a possible solution to her escape, until she learns the truth about her father’s work there.  When she heads back home, she throws herself into the national effort for the war, hoping that she can escape the disintegrating world around her in which her mother slips more and more each day.  The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein is about the outside forces that shape who we are depending on how strong we are on the inside and our ability to make our way out of the darkness into the light.

About the Author:

Jennifer Cody Epstein is the author of The Gods of Heavenly Punishment and the international bestseller The Painter from Shanghai. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Self, Mademoiselle and NBC, and has worked in Hong Kong, Japan and Bangkok, Thailand. Jennifer lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, two daughters and especially needy Springer Spaniel. To connect with Jennifer, “like” her on Facebook.