Review: Belle Weather: Mostly Sunny With a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits, by Celia Rivenbark

The sum of my experience with Southerners is four years on college campus in Virginia, but I could definitely relate to the humorous essays in Celia Rivenbark’s latest collection. Covering everything from home repair to pop culture, Rivenbark is strongest when she’s talking about the habits of Southerners (she’s from North Carolina), but each of the short essays is equally filled with insight. I absolutely couldn’t stop laughing with this book, and I finished it within a few hours yesterday afternoon. In a lot of ways, Rivenbark reminds me a lot of Laurie Notaro or Jen Lancaster, but less self-absorbed.

My only problem with this book is the editing—the punctuation is off, and there are even whole words missing that made me have to go back and re-read various sentences. But don’t let this one minor flaw deter you from reading this perfectly enjoyable brain fluff.

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Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars...

Review: Mariana, by Monica Dickens

Mariana is the story of one young girl’s growth towards adulthood during the 1920s and ‘30s. The book begins when Mary Shannon is eight, and traveling with her somewhat flighty mother to Charbury, her grandparents’ house; and continues up through the time that Mary is twenty-four and waiting to hear news of her husband from the war. Monica Dickens (a great-granddaughter of Charles) depicts Mary’s maturation to adulthood with perfection. The reader sympathizes with Mary as she experiences the ups and downs of relationships and careers—experimenting with both seems to be pretty characteristic of Mary, as she grapples a bit with identity and independence. And yet, there isn’t the usual amount of teenage angst that one usually finds in a novel about growing up, which I found to be very refreshing. Mary is a sweet and sometimes naïve girl, but at the same time, she’s also wonderfully sarcastic towards her peers. She’s hard to like at times, but in an odd way, I found myself sympathizing wi...

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