Mailbox Monday (April 23, 2012)

 Mailbox Monday will be hosted in April by Cindy at Cindy's Love of  Books.  In My Mailbox is hosted Sundays at The Story Siren.  I got some more nice wins this week and a couple of review books.  Come on in and take a look!


Review books first:




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Mind Monsters: Conquering fear, worry, guilt and other negative thoughts that work against you
by Kevin Gerald


Every day we are bombarded with negative messages—from society, the media, and even from self-talk in our own minds. Take a minute to think about these questions:
 


Do you lack peace because of your perspective? Do you focus on the problems around you? Do you have trouble recognizing the good things in your life? Do you feel despair or depression, despite your blessings?


 Answering yes to questions like these is evidence of mind monsters. Mind monsters are those negative thoughts we all battle, the creeping shadows in the corners of our minds that feed our insecurities, worries, and fears. They will steal your life…if you let them. But there is good news! You can take control. In Mind Monsters Kevin Gerald shows you how to recognize destructive thoughts, take them captive, and use biblical truths to overcome them.
 
Today you have a choice: Will you allow your mind monsters to take up residence, affecting who you are and God’s plan for your life, or will you conquer them and experience a life that is positive, abundant, joyful, and overflowing with peace?




(NO PICTURE AVAILABLE)


Listening to Africa


by Diana M. Raab


Poet Diana M. Raab travels to the heart of Africa with her family to experience the beauty and fascination of another world. During her safari, she observes the distress, the delight, and the dignity of the humans and animals who live there and parallels them with her own quest for health.

The Sausage Maker's Daughters

by AGS Johnson

The sausage maker's youngest daughter is heading for the fight of her battle-scarred life. It's the era of the counterculture and Vietnam. But twenty-four-year-old Kip Czermanksi is nowhere near her home in California. She's in a jail cell in her hometown in Wisconsin awaiting a court appearance in the mysterious death of her ex-lover, who happened to be her brother-in-law. Given her father is the small town's leading citizen; Kip isn't overly worried, at first. But the personal grudge the DA holds for all the Czermanskis is about to find a foil Kip. What follows is a wild ride through Kip's present predicament and her past. She'll come to regret leaving her life in LA, regardless of the good reason for which she returned, when family dynamics and sibling rivalries, magnified by her counterculture attitudes and feminist beliefs, lay Kip's life bare before the courtroom. Distrusting her legal team, her rebellious history well known, things both personal and legal spiral out-of-control. It doesn't look good for Kip Czermanski.

The Get Yourself Organized Project:

21 Steps to Less Mess and Stress

by Kathi Lipp

Finally, an organizational book for women who have given up trying to be Martha Stewart but still desire some semblance of order in their lives.

Most organizational books are written by and for people who are naturally structured and orderly. For the woman who is more ADD than type A, the advice sounds terrific but seldom works. These women are looking for help that takes into account their free-spirited outlook while providing tips and tricks they can easily follow to live a more organized life.

Kathi Lipp, author of The Husband Project and other "project" books, is just the author to address this need. In her inimitable style, she offers

easy and effective ways women can restore peace to their everyday lives 
simple and manageable long-term solutions for organizing any room in one's home (and keeping it that way) 
a realistic way to de-stress a busy schedule 
strategies for efficient shopping, meal preparation, cleaning, and more 

Full of helpful tips and abundant good humor, The Get Yourself Organized Project is for those who want to spend their time living and enjoying life rather than organizing their sock drawer.

Goodbye For Now


by Laurie Frankel

Sam Elliot works for an internet dating company, but he still can't get a date. So he creates an algorithm that will match you with your soul mate. Sam meets the love of his life, a coworker named Meredith, but he also gets fired when the company starts losing all their customers to Mr. and Ms. Right.

When Meredith's grandmother, Livvie, dies suddenly, Sam uses his ample free time to create a computer program that will allow Meredith to have one last conversation with her grandmother. Mining from all her correspondence—email, Facebook, Skype, texts—Sam constructs a computer simulation of Livvie who can respond to email or video chat just as if she were still alive. It's not supernatural, it's computer science.

Meredith loves it, and the couple begins to wonder if this is something that could help more people through their grief. And thus, the company RePose is born. The business takes off, but for every person who just wants to say good-bye, there is someone who can't let go. 

In the meantime, Sam and Meredith's affection for one another deepens into the kind of love that once tasted, you can't live without. But what if one of them suddenly had to? This entertaining novel, delivers a charming and bittersweet romance as well as a lump in the throat exploration of the nature of love, loss, and life (both real and computer simulated). Maybe nothing was meant to last forever, but then again, sometimes love takes on a life of its own.

The Innocents


by Francesca Segal

A smart and slyly funny tale of love, temptation, confusion, and commitment, "The Innocents" is a generous and deeply satisfying look at a close-knit society in which one young man's pre-wedding panic illuminates the universal conflict between responsibility and passion.

Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, twenty-eight-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish suburb of London. He has been dating Rachel Gilbert since they were both sixteen and now, to the relief and happiness of the entire Gilbert family, they are finally to marry. To Adam, Rachel embodies the highest values of Temple Fortune; she is innocent, conventional, and entirely secure in her community—a place in which everyone still knows the whereabouts of their nursery school classmates. Marrying Rachel will cement Adam’s role in a warm, inclusive family he loves. 
But as the vast machinery of the wedding gathers momentum, Adam feels the first faint touches of claustrophobia, and when Rachel’s younger cousin Ellie Schneider moves home from New York, she unsettles Adam more than he’d care to admit. Ellie—beautiful, vulnerable, and fiercely independent—offers a liberation that he hadn’t known existed: a freedom from the loving interference and frustrating parochialism of North West London. Adam finds himself questioning everything, suddenly torn between security and exhilaration, tradition and independence. What might he be missing by staying close to home?

Momnesia was won from the author Lori Verni-Fogarsi in the Hoppy Easter Giveaway!

Momnesia


by Lori Verni-Fogarsi

She's smart, pretty, and runs her own business. So then why does she feel so dead inside? Between work, two kids, and a husband who finds her about as exciting as furniture shopping, this is the story of a (formerly-exciting but now way-too-typical) suburban mom who diagnoses herself with "Momnesia" and sets about finessing a new version of her old vivaciousness:

MOMNESIA (mahm-nee-zhuh) -noun-
Loss of the memory of who you used to be. Caused by pregnancy, play dates, and trying to keep the house cleaner than the Joneses.

She finds some adventure pursuing her own interests, and does make some new friends (including the battery operated variety), but still feels like nothing more than a caretaker.

In between dealing with her husband's manic-depressive behavior, drama with her friends, and some naughty Internet escapades, she keeps facing the question, "Is it that I haven't been myself? Or is it that I am being myself but just different than I used to be?" It isn't until she tosses the Invisible Rule Book altogether that she discovers life--and love--have more to offer than she ever imagined!

The next two books I won from Kathi at I am a Reader, Not a Writer from the Autism Awareness Giveaway: 

The Legend of Mickey Tussler


by Frank Nappi

Seventeen-year-old Mickey Tussler is recruited to play for a minor league affiliate of the Boston Braves. Arthur Murphy swears Mickey has the greatest arm he has ever seen, that anybody has ever seen.  And it might be true.  But Mickey's autism is prohibitive.  It keeps him sealed off from a world he scarcely understands.  Lost both in the memory of his former life with an abusive father and the challenges of a new world filled with heckling teammates, opponents and fans, there's no way Mickey can succeed.  But his inimitable talent -- one of the most gifted arms in the history of baseball -- gives him a chance. Can he survive a real life dream?  Or are the harsh realities of life too much for him?  This is the powerful underdog story of how a young man with an extraordinary gift comes of age in a harsh and competitive world.

Sophomore Campaign


by Frank Nappi

It s 1949 and eighteen-year-old pitching phenomMickey Tussler is back with the rejuvenated minorleague Brewers in the sequel to The Legend of MickeyTussler (the basis for the television movie A Milein His Shoes). Despite Mickey s proclamation thathe will never play baseball again after last season sviolent conclusion, his manager and now surrogatefather Arthur Murphy cajoles the emotionallyfragile, socially awkward boy with autism into givingit another shot. Mickey reluctantly returns to thefield and must once again cope with the violenceand hatred around him. When a young AfricanAmerican player joins the team, the entire team issubjected to racial threats and episodes of violence, one of which Mickey witnesses firsthand. Strugglingto understand such ugliness and hatred, and fearfulof reprisal should he tell anyone about what he hasseen, the boy s performance on the field suffers.Mickey now must deal with a side of human naturehe scarcely comprehends.

Happy Reading!