First, apologies for the long stretches between posts. Work has been busy and I’ve been on the road a bit, so I haven’t had as much time to blog. Hopefully the posts will pick up again soon. Thanks for sticking with me.
Maybe this will help: the first EDIWTB giveaway.
I am on the radar of a few publishing companies that sometimes send me free books. Here are 4 books that I have gotten for free from publishers (one at a book signing). I am not going to read three of them, and the fourth is a duplicate copy of a book I’ve already received a review copy of, so I’d like to pass them along to someone else who may be interested in reading them. If you’d like one (or more) of the books, send me an email at [email protected] and I will put them in the mail to the first to speak up.
1. The Choice, by Nicholas Sparks. If you liked The Notebook, then you may like this book from the same author. Amazon says:
#1 New York Times bestseller Nicholas Sparks turns his unrivaled talents to a new tale about love found and lost, and the choices we hope we’ll never have to make.Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life – boating, swimming , and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies — he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door. Spanning the eventful years of young love, marriage and family, The Choice ultimately confronts us with the most heartwrenching question of all: how far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?
2. The Middle Place, by Kelly Corrigan. If you like Grey’s Anatomy, you might enjoy this memoir by a 30-something woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time that her father is fighting the the disease. One book blurb says, "Kelly Corrigan’s utterly absorbing memoir is wry, smart, and often heart-wrenching. Corrigan takes us down memory lane and then, at the same time, down some other, darker road most of us hope never to travel. Yet we follow her all the way, quite willingly, thanks to her sharp eye and her great sense of humor." Note: this book isn’t due out until January 8, 2008, so you can beat the rush…
3. The Collection, by Gioia Diliberto. If you liked The Devil Wears Prada and Marie Antoinette, you might like this book, which I picked up at a book signing I went to randomly with a friend. EW gave it a good review:
The Collection is a valentine to Gabrielle ”Coco” Chanel, the woman behind the famously musky No. 5 fragrance and the iconic little black dress. Gioia Diliberto intertwines her fictionalized behind-the-seams portrait of the haute couture queen with that of Isabelle Varlet, a consumptive country girl/precocious needleworker. While Diliberto can be prone to florid prose — Isabelle sees her future as ”a sparkling, flower-filled meadow” — her descriptions of garments are beautifully evocative and vivid, down to the last hand-sewn stitch. Who knew there could be so much drama in the early-20th-century French fashion revolution? B+
4. The Other Mother by Gwendolyn Gross. If you liked Perfect Madness, you might like this novel that explores motherhood from two perspectives: a stay-at-home and a working mom. I ended up with two review copies of this book, so I am giving one away. I’m planning to read it at some point. I write for DC Metro Moms blog, which is a sister blog to the Chicago Moms Blog and the Silicon Valley Moms Blog. The three blogs did a joint online book club meeting on this book a week ago, which you can review here. I, of course, didn’t finish (or even start) the book before last Monday, so I didn’t post on it. But lots of people did, so if you’re interested, scroll through the comments.
Any takers?