When I got home from a weekend trip to Bend and found two review copies of Small Mercies by Eddie Joyce waiting in my stack of mail, I decided to try out Rafflecopter and run a giveaway here on the blog. And now we have a winner!
ByGD
Enchantment Lake
I never read Nancy Drew until my daughter got a haircut a couple of years ago that prompted people to say she looked like the famous sleuth. But that doesn’t mean I never went through the girl detective phase as a kid. I actually did it more than once. Linda Craig’s curiously crime-ridden ranch filled my first and second grade years. Trixie Belden’s curiously crime-ridden quaint bedroom community took up a stretch of fifth. In third grade there was also a bunch of kid detectives with a house trailer hideout in a junk yard, but I think they were all boys. In any case, I’m not new to girl detective books, even though it has been a long time since I immersed myself in one.
ByGD
Ambassador Kate DiCamillo at Seattle Public Library
Kate DiCamillo has a Southern accent. I did not expect this because I do not hear it in the lyrical rhythms of her wide-eyed fiction. Both the accent and the wonder are explained by her childhood in Florida, where she experienced a number of unusual theme parks, and was particularly impressed by the vision of hidden worlds granted by glass-bottomed boats. It was on one of these boats that she heard a lady in a plastic rainbonnet say
Oh my. This world.
And knew exactly what she meant. Read More
ByGD
China Dolls
I have been a fan of Lisa See since On Gold Mountain, so I was excited to receive a review copy of China Dolls before the book came out last year. Of course my enthusiasm failed to translate into a prompt reading and review of the book, but what can you do? See’s career took off with On Gold Mountain, the fictionalized history of her own pioneering mixed-race Chinese-American family. Her novels, generally historical fiction either set in China or dealing with Chinese-Americans, tend to focus on forgotten or ignored bits of history from a feminine point of view. In these historical and cultural contexts, she explores themes of ethnic and female identity, and relationships among women. China Dolls is a story about Asian women in American show business in the early part of the 20th century. Read More
ByGD
I’m Giving Away Small Mercies
I went out of town for a weekend, and when I got home my stack of mail included several books for review. Inexplicably, I had received two hardback copies of the novel Small Mercies by Eddie Joyce. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn how to do something new on the blog, so I’m giving away one copy. Read More