Mailbox Monday (July 30, 2012)

Welcome to Mailbox Monday, the weekly meme created by Marcia from A girl and her books.  This is where I share the titles I have received for review or purchased during the past week.  Mailbox Monday will be hosted in July by Mrs Q Book Addict.

Gone
by Cathi Hanauer


For the past fourteen years, Eve Adams has worked part-time while raising her two children and emotionally supporting her sculptor husband, Eric, through his early fame and success.  Now, at forty-two, she suddenly finds herself with a growing career of her own -- a private nutritionist practice and a book deal -- even as Eric's career sinks deeper into the slump it slipped into a few years ago.


After a dinner at a local restaurant to celebrate Eve's success, Eric drives the babysitter home and, simply, doesn't come back.  Eve must now shift the family in possibly irreparable ways, forcing her to realize that competence in one area of life doesn't always keep things from unraveling in another.


Gone is an outstanding novel about change and about redefining, in middle age, everything from one's marriage to one's career to tone's role as a best friend, parent, and spouse.  It is a novel about passon and forgiveness and knowing when to let something go and when to fight to hold on to it, about learning to say goodbye -- but, if you're lucky, not forever. 

Some Remarks
by Neal Stephenson


One of the most talented and creative authors working today, Neal Stephenson is renowned for his exceptional novels -- works colossal in vision and mind-boggling in complexity. Exploring and blending a diversity of topics, including technology, economics, history, science, op culture, and philosophy, his books are the products of a keen and adventurous intellect.  Not surprisingly, Stephenson is regularly asked to contribute articles, lectures, and essays to numerous outlets, from major newspapers and cutting-edge magazines to college symposia. This remarkable collection brings together previously published short writings, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as a new essay (and an extremely short story) created specifically for this volume.


Stephenson ponders a wealth of subjects, from movies and politics to David Foster Wallace and the Midwestern American College Town; video games to classics-based sci-fi; how geekdom has become cool and how science fiction has become mainstream (whether people admit it or not); the future of publishing and the origins of his novels.  Playful and provocative, Some Remarks displays Stephenson's opinions and ideas on:

• The Internet, our dwindling national attention span and the cultural importance of books and bookishness
• Waco, religion, and the cluelessness of secular society
• Metaphysics and the battle between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
• The laying of the longest wire on Earth -- and why it matters to you
• Technology, freedom, commerce, and the Chinese
• How Star Wars and 300 mirror who we are today -- and what that spells for our future
• Modern Jedi knights, a.k.a. scientists and echnologists, and why they are admired and feared by both the left and the right

By turns amusing and profound, critical and celebratory, yet always entertaining, Some Remarks offers a fascinating look into the prismatic mind of this extraordinary writer.