Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.
Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. The July host is Gwendolyn at A Sea of Books.
I have three new books this week. Two for review and one win from the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop.
A galley from the publisher for review.
Destiny of the Republic
by Candice Millard
James A. Garfield may have been the most extraordinary man ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.
From the author for review.
Miss Hildreth Wore Brown:
Anecdotes of a Southern Belle
by Olivia deBelle Byrd
With storytelling written in the finest Southern tradition from the soap operas of Chandler Street in the quaint town of Gainesville, Georgia, to a country store on the Alabama state line, Olivia deBelle Byrd delves with wit and amusement into the world of the Deep South with all its unique idiosyncrasies and colloquialisms.
A win from Knitting and Sundries.
Crooked Letter Crooked Letter
by Tom Franklin
In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas “32” Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all.
Does The Noise In My Head Bother You?
by Steven Tyler
Read by: Jeremy Davidson
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Harper Audio
Publish Date: May 2011
Format: Audio CD | 13 Hours and 1 min
Rating: 2½ of 5
I’ve been listening to Aerosmith’s music since the ’70s, way back whenToys in the Attic was first released on vinyl. While I’m familiar with their music through the years, I knew little about the band and expected this to be an informative read for the casual fan. Sadly, I had a difficult time staying interested in this book. At times it could be witty, funny and engaging, but there were too few of those times.
Steven Tyler relates his life story in a very stream of consciousness nature, almost rambling at times, skipping from topic to topic. There was way to much emphasis on drugs, sex, groupies and more drugs. I got the point the first few times he tells us that rock gods such as himself can have their pick of women and it’s easy to obtain all the drugs they desire. While he claims to love and respect women, it doesn’t show through in the tales he tells about life on the road with the band. The language used in this book was very explicit; definitely R rated. I don’t cringe at a few four letter words to add emphasis or meaning but in this case (I listened to the audio) it was excessive.
I wondered if the emphasis on sex and drugs plus the constant explicit language added or subtracted from the book. Does it make it more honest because that is who he is? Toward the end of the book Steven does explain why he included so many of the drug episodes and the colorful language by saying, “I wouldn’t be who I am without the good, the bad and the ugly”. I agree; I wouldn’t want the book to be a sanitized version but a little less of the above and a little more about the band, the songs, his family, friends and perhaps some other anecdotes would have made this a better memoir for me.
The book was narrated by Jeremy Davidson who did an excellent job of sounding like a rock and roller. Ya know, that rock star voice. I can’t describe it but I know it when I hear it. He was easy to listen to and contributed to my decision to keep listening even after I decided this was not my style of book.
While this was not the book for me, I would recommend it to Aerosmith fans and the more avid rock fans, especially those that like an in-your-face, no-holes-barred rock memoir.
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Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
The Barn Swallow is a common bird across most of North America in the summer. They are migratory and spend the winters in the southern hemisphere. Originally they nested in caves but now their nests are found almost exclusively on man-made structures.
There is a picnic pavilion in a park where I go for walks that is home to a family of barn swallows. Their nest is made of mud and grass which they place on a vertical wall high up in the rafters. Both the male and female build the nest and incubate the eggs.
These nestlings are a few days away from fledging and leaving their nest. They are waiting for a food delivery. I thought they looked a little grumpy!
The parents will dive bomb your head if you try to sit down and watch them feed the nestlings. After they chattered and swooped at me several times, I moved behind one of the pavilion posts and hid there until they either forgot about me or assumed I was harmless.
Barn Swallows eat insects and like to nest in areas where bugs are plentiful. They are aerial foragers and will catch insects such as crickets, dragonflies, beetles, and moths in flight.
One of the adults landed on the pavement just outside the pavilion and gave me a look of resignation as if to say, “I guess she’s not leaving without photos”.
I think this is the female. Both male and female have a long forked tail and iridescent blue upperparts. The female has mostly white underparts while the male has a rich orange coloring.
For more bird photos check out my previous Weekend Birding posts.
I link up my bird photos on Saturday Snapshot hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.
It Came From The ’70s:
From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now
by Connie Corcoran Wilson
Genre: Reference, Movies
Publisher: Quad City Press
Publish Date: August 25, 2010
Format: Paperback, 268 pages
Rating: 4 of 5
My prime movie going years were in the ’70s, so when I was asked to review a copy of It Came From the ’70s, I jumped at the chance to relive those movie experiences. Back then, before cable television and HBO, VCRs, DVDs and streaming video on demand, going to the movie theater once or twice a week was a major source of entertainment for me and my friends. Saturday was date night and I would pour over the movie pages in the newspaper to decide which new release we would see that weekend. Many of these movies live on today to be enjoyed by an entirely new audience.
It Came From The ’70s is a window into a fantastic era of movies, a time when the first of such classics as Star Wars, The Godfather and Dirty Harry appeared on the big screen. The author spent fifteen years as a movie critic during the 1970s and 1980s and saved copies of most of her reviews. She was able to draw on those original impressions when compiling the book which spotlights about 45 movies including the original reviews, new comments by the author, lists of cast and crew, trivia questions, photos and some movie posters.
Even though I have seen many of the movies included in the book and thought I knew a lot about them I was surprised to find a number of tidbits of new-to-me information. Also enjoyable was reading the old reviews and impressions of the movies at the time they were released, something which could never be reproduced today as opinions are often changed by history. The author also included a few one star stinkers because it was sometimes more fun to review those. I’m glad she did as I enjoyed reading her witty comments while she skewered a few particularly bad movies.
This is a great ride through the ’70s with movies good, bad and somewhere in between. With so many excellent titles released during that decade I realize it would be impossible to include them all, much less actually watch and review them. Nevertheless I was sad to find that a few of my favorite movie classics such as American Graffiti, Animal House and Blazing Saddles were not included.
Overall this is a wonderful reference book for movie lovers young and old and would make a great gift for the movie buff on your list.
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Source: Book provided by the author through Premier Virtual Book Tours. Visit their webpage for a list of tour stops during the month of July.
More about the author at her website.
Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.
Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. The July host is Gwendolyn at A Sea of Books.
Only one book for me this week and none last week which is probably a good thing since I’m already behind on my reviews. With the summer weather finally here, I do much less print reading and listen to a lot more audiobooks but have less time to write as I like to be outdoors gardening, watching birds, taking photos and enjoying nature as much as possible. Summer is much too short here in the midwest.
I received a copy of the trade paperback from Random House.
The Passage
by Justin Cronin
An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy–abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl—and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape—but he can’t stop society’s collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world.
At over 700 pages I’m happy this is now out in paperback.
Map of Time
by Felix J. Palma
Genre: Historical Fiction and a mix of genres
Publisher: Atria Books
Publish Date: June 28, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 624 pages
Rating: 4½ of 5
Toss together mystery, romance, fantasy, murder, some scifi, a little steampunk, and a clever plot involving H.G. Wells and time travel and you get a magical story that is highly original, creative and unusual. Not at all what I expected and I was pleasantly surprised.
The book is divided into three loosely related parts each involving incidents of time travel and H.G. Wells. The stories have a common theme but are each very different. All are set in Victorian London, Wells had just published his novel The Time Machine and talk of time travel was the rage.
The first part was about an upper-class young man in love with a prostitute who was murdered by Jack The Ripper. He is so distraught he contemplates suicide. His cousin comes up with a plan to use H.G. Well’s time machine to travel back in time to save her life. In the second part Murray’s Time Travel offers an adventure ride to the future to the post apocalyptic year 2000 to watch the Battle of London against the Automatons. One young woman on the trip falls in love with the hero of the battle and wants to stay there. And in the last part a visitor from the future approaches Wells to enlist his help to save yet to be published literature from destruction.
I enjoyed the first part the most and this story could stand entirely on it’s own. There is a great twist in this story that will delight any time travel fan. The second part was a romance that, although fun to read, was a little difficult to believe even as a fantasy. I also thought it borrowed a bit from The Time Traveler’s Wife. Without giving away too many spoilers, the reader is never sure if the time travel is real or illusion. The last part brings it all together and ties up the loose ends. I especially enjoyed the many plot twists and this makes it difficult to describe much about the plot without giving anything away. Just when you think you know what is coming next you are once again surprised. I read an advance of this book knowing only the details in the publisher’s summary and not knowing much made it more fun.
The book was originally published in Spanish. Other than a few convoluted sentences the translation was excellent and the writing is beautiful. The author vividly describes Victorian London while at the same time giving us a fantastical view of the future and engaging characters. Occasionally he would ramble off into an aside, such as the encounter with Joseph Merrick the Elephant Man, that went on and on and didn’t seem to have a purpose in the plot, other than to enhance the feel of Victorian London.
At 600+ pages the book is a bit of a commitment but I urge you to give it a chance. It’s a very readable and enjoyable book. The loose plot and storyline comes together for a satisfying ending. Truly delightful, a fun journey to the past and the future. Highly recommended.
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Source: Advance copy from the publisher.
Under My Apple Tree 