Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page.

Thank you Rose City Reader for hosting this month's Mailbox Monday blog tour.

Check out her blog and post all the new books you acquired last week.

 An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town by David Farley (from author)

From Amazon:

In December 1983, a priest in the Italian hill town of Calcata shared shocking news with his congregation: The pride of their town, the foreskin of Jesus, had been stolen. Some postulated that it had been stolen by Satanists. Some said the priest himself was to blame. Some even pointed their fingers at the Vatican. In 2006, travel writer David Farley moved to Calcata, determined to find the missing foreskin, or at least find out the truth behind its disappearance. Farley recounts how the relic passed from Charlemagne to the papacy to a marauding sixteenth-century German solider before finally ending up in Calcata, where miracles occurred that made the sleepy town a major pilgrimage destination. Over the centuries, as Catholic theology evolved, the relic came to be viewed as something of an embarrassment, culminating in a 1900 Church decree that allowed the parish to display it only on New Year's Day.

An Irreverent Curiosity interweaves this history with the curious landscape of Calcata, a beautiful and untouched medieval village set atop four-hundred-fifty-foot cliffs, which now, due to the inscrutable machinations of Italian bureaucracy, is a veritable counterculture coven. Blending history, travel, and perhaps the oddest story in Christian lore, An Irreverent Curiosity is a weird and wonderful tale of conspiracy and misadventure. 

Across the Universe

Across the Universe
By Beth Revis

Amy is a girl who is frozen, along with her parents and many others, in order to travel to another planet that they will inhabit.  The plan is that they will be frozen for the 300 years it will take them to reach this planet but Amy is unplugged 50 years early and no one knows why or who did it.  Overall, Across the Universe was a book that I enjoyed.  There was just one thing that annoyed me...the Season.

I plowed through the first half of the book because I wanted to know what was going to happen but then I set the book down for a period of time and I had a hard time getting back into the story.  The problem was that I unknowingly set it down at the start of the Season which turned out to be the worst part of the story.  At one point, I actually had to set the book down and check out other reviews online to see if anyone else felt the same way I did because I was so appalled. 

I was so grateful for Google Book Blog Custom Search (which I finally added to my sidebar because I use it all the time) and I just got lucky that the first blog on the list was Melissa at One Librarian's Book Reviews because she said exactly what I was thinking (Click HERE to read her review). I just felt that the Season was unnecessary, or at least part of it was.  I think Revis could have made her point without going so far over the top.  The story did pick up again after the Season and we were able to get back to everything else. Aside from the Season and the fact that some of the major plot points were fairly obvious early on, the story was intriguing.

Revis really captured how it might feel to be stuck on a ship that is not going to land for a really long time.  To be on a spaceship, unable to see the sun or breathe fresh air or even run outside, is heartbreaking in itself.  Then, to have to experience all of this surrounded by people who don't understand what they are missing because they were raised inside the metal walls and you woke up 50 years early is beyond devastating.  The terror and claustrophobia and sadness are all portrayed perfectly as the mystery behind why Amy woke up early unfolds. 

**Source: ARC from publisher.

Giveaway Winner

Congratulations Anne-Marie T!!! 

You are the winner of 

Waiting for Columbus on audiobook.

Last Chance to Win Waiting for Columbus!!

Only a couple more days to enter my giveaway for Waiting for Columbus by Thomas Trofimuk on audiobook. 

Ends January 25th. 

Interview with Author Jessie Sholl

Earlier this week I reviewed Dirty Secret by Jessie Sholl.  As you can see by my review, I absolutely loved this book so I was extremely excited when Jessie agreed to answer a few of my questions. 

You dedicate the book to your mom and I have read that she was quite supportive of the book but what was her first reaction when she found out you were writing it? Did she need any convincing?

She needed no convincing. The conversation went like this:
Me: Mom, I’m thinking about writing about hoarding. What do you think of that idea?
Helen: I think that’s a wonderful idea.
Me: To be clear, I’d be writing about you. Since you’re the only hoarder I know.
Helen: I still think it’s a wonderful idea. Writing about it could help other hoarders and their families.

I also showed her parts of the book along the way and told her that if there was anything she particularly objected to, I’d take it out. She didn’t have me take out anything--nor did any of my other family members, which I very much appreciate. I’ve heard many horror stories about family battles post-publication, and I am so happy that I’ve experienced none of that.

When I began nearing the end of the book, I realized that I wanted to know so much more and I knew everything I wanted to know couldn't possibly be covered in the remaining pages. Do you think you will ever give any kind of follow-up in the future?

Hmm… I’m not sure. The events of the book--not to give away the plot too much--just happened to form a pretty self-sustaining dramatic arc and I’m not sure I’ll be in a situation like that again. But maybe. You never know. I guess that’s not much of an answer!

I continuously read that when you began sharing your story with people you were pleasantly surprised by their reactions and the fact that people didn't judge. It is so incredible that everyone was so supportive, did anyone close to you surprise you and say they were actually aware of you mom's hoarding?

Good question! No, no one did. Most of my friends said, “I always knew you and your mother had an unusual relationship, but not the extent of it,” or “I knew that she had some kind of mental illness, but not what,” but no one, other than my husband, knew about the hoarding.

You wrote about finding the Children of Hoarders message boards and give them a huge thanks in your Acknowledgments, how did the Children of Hoarders community react to your writing this book?

Very, very positively. The group has been incredibly supportive. I’ve gotten a lot of individual emails too, from children of hoarders, just saying thanks for writing about this and getting the issue of how hoarding affects family members into the spotlight. I truly love getting those emails. They make the hard work of writing the book—and I’m talking about the emotional aspects more than the twelve-hour writing days—completely worth it.

I keep thinking about all the things that could have happened since you finished the book but there is one thing above all others that I have to ask...were the bugs really gone?

Yes! I promise.

Thanks again Jessie!
  

Don't forget to check out:

My review of Dirty Secret

Jessie's Blog

The Dirty Secret website

"Waiting On" Wednesday

Jill at Breaking the Spine hosts "Waiting on" Wednesday, a place where we can voice the books we are patiently - okay probably impatiently - waiting to be released.




The Peach Keeper: A Novel
by Sarah Addison Allen
Pub. date: March 22, 2011

From Amazon:

The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town’s famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.


It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow. No easy task in a town shaped by years of tradition and the well-marked boundaries of the haves and have-nots.


But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, and certain to drag up dire consequences along with it.


For the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind. Long-kept secrets surrounding the troubling remains have also come to light, seemingly heralded by a spate of sudden strange occurrences throughout the town.


Now, thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the dangerous passions and tragic betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover truths of the long-dead that have transcended time and defied the grave to touch the hearts and souls of the living.


Resonant with insight into the deep and lasting power of friendship, love, and tradition, The Peach Keeper is a portrait of the unshakable bonds that—in good times and bad, from one generation to the next—endure forever.

Dirty Secret - Jessie Sholl

Dirty Secret
by Jessie Sholl

What can I say about this book? Let me start with...READ IT! Read it because you are curious or because you can relate to it or because you think you won't relate to it (because you will most likely find a part of it you can relate to). This story has relevance to almost anyone. Jessie Sholl has gotten down and dirty (sorry about the pun) with hoarding and she writes about her experience in the most honest, fascinating, horrifying, hilarious, and heart wrenching way.

Growing-up, Jessie's mom always kept her house in a state of disarray but it wasn't until a specific event that she really became a compulsive hoarder. Jessie shares her experiences, shedding new light on hoarding in an extremely well-researched way.  The book develops around Jessie and here mother, Helen, who I found to be quite adorable at many times in a...whimsical sort of way and all the crazy things she did, strangely, just added to that.  Jessie also incorporates enough of what was going on in her life outside of her mother to really highlight how being the daughter of a compulsive hoarder affects her and the people around her, people like her husband David.  David has to deal with a lot but through it all he is so supportive and understanding that by the end of the book I had a crush on him (shh...don't tell my husband).  

Jessie is easy to relate to and quite hilarious. I just want everyone to read Dirty Secret so I have more people to talk to about it. It's not hard to imagine that I can relate to some of the things she talks about (check out the name of my blog folks) and yes it caused me to go on a major cleaning spree (which my husband loved) but in the end it comes down to family. Sometimes you love them, sometimes you don't want to step foot in their house but they are there and you have to deal with them so you may as well laugh about it.

I feel like I could gush forever about Dirty Secret and I don't actually want to do that for fear of what I call the "Mockingjay Syndrome." I don't want to hype it up to be so good that it can never live up to your expectations. There are no dancing Leprechauns or shiny rainbows at the end of this book. This book will not lead you to a pot of gold....well maybe it will lead Jessie Sholl to a pot of gold...actually it probably won't but it should, she deserves a pot of gold, or at least a rainbow...what was I saying? Gold...rainbows...expectations, right!

So, moral of the story is read this book...and check back this Thursday, January 20 to read my interview with Jessie Sholl. 

**Source: I received this ARC for review from the author to write an honest review. The fact that Jessie Sholl is doing a Q&A has in no way affected my review. I read the book and wrote most of my review before most of the correspondence with Jessie that made me realize how awesome she is. Please believe me when I say I really, truly loved this book as much as I say I do.