It's My Party: Birthday Week Giveaway Day 1

"Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story." ~ John Barth

My birthday is this week (August 11th) and I decided that I wanted to share some gifts with you, dear readers. So this is the first giveaway of the week with more to come.

You may not know this, but I have a degree in English and Secondary Education. That means that at one time I held a teaching license in the state of Wisconsin. And my first job out of college was as a 7th grade English teacher.

I loved to read as a child. I would find such solace in books. I credit my learning to read while I was quite young around age 4-5 with my mother working in a public library and the fact that I hated peas. 

You see, my mother had to work on some Saturdays and she would bring me along. They had a great children's department at the Hennepin County Public Library. I even met Tomie De Paola there when I was a kid and he came to share his books with us. But I would grow bored with the kiddie books and wander off. They would find me in the stacks surrounded by a pile of books. I couldn't necessarily read them, but I was fascinated. To this day I cannot go into a library without the urge to sit myself in a stack someplace and just look at book after book.

Fast forward a year or two and I can recall sitting at the dining room table staring at a plate of peas. I was not allowed to leave the table until I finished them. I recall sitting there pouting, listening to the strains of the latest Disney cartoon wafting up from the television set on a Sunday night (anyone else remember those great Disney shows on Sunday night?). But I was stubborn and refused to eat them (and I still hate peas). The bookcase was next to the table, so I started picking out books and trying to read them.

  

I particularly loved stories that I could feel lost in, that I would want to live myself. I love to read books about different times and places. My favorite authors as a young adult were Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle. And of course I loved to write.

I love to give the gift of books and pass along books that I have found particularly interesting.

But for a former English teacher and a current writer, I really don't get to read as much as I would like. Still, I have read some books in the recent past and thought that I would pass them along to some random winner.

Following are the titles that I have availble to pass along, each with a little teaser about them. (Note: All teaser texts are exerpts from Amazon.com; my thoughts are in italics).

Good Enough to Eat - Stacey Ballis 

Melanie Hoffman and her husband Andrew have been happily married for almost 10 years but when Melanie slims down to a trim size 6 after once tipping the scale at 290 pounds, her hubby leaves her for another chubby lady. Now divorced, the 39 year-old finds solace in her successful Chicago restaurant serving healthy gourmet fare. She has a small support group there consisting of her energetic, gay sous chef, Kai, a ballsy part-time cook, Delia, and her new roomie, a 24-year-old whimsical vagabond named Nadia. As Melanie slowly sweeps up the crumbs of fallen love, she finds Nathan and the handsome documentary filmmaker helps her overcome her body image issues. Ballis's (The Spinster Sisters) use of the enjoyment of cooking and eating as a continuous theme with featured recipes in the back is a nice addition, but the heart of her book lies within the jagged mind of Melanie and her daily struggle that most women, fat or thin, endure. Women will savor the brutal honesty of how Melanie sees her body, her battles with food, her failed marriage, and her fear of new love.

I really liked this character. I can relate to her issues with self-confidence issues and the image of what constitutes beauty. I found myself rooting for Melanie at every turn. It was one of those books that I could immediately see turned into a long-running TV show. The characters were fun and unexpected. And I loved all the recipes that were paired with the chapters that were included in the end of the book. I would like to read more of Ballis' books.

Such a Pretty Fat - Jen Lancaster

"To whom the fat rolls…I'm tired of books where a self-loathing heroine is teased to the point where she starves herself skinny in hopes of a fabulous new life. And I hate the message that women can't possibly be happy until we all fit into our skinny jeans. I don't find these stories uplifting; they make me want to hug these women and take them out for fizzy champagne drinks and cheesecake and explain to them that until they figure out their insides, their outsides don't matter. Unfortunately, being overweight isn't simply a societal issue that can be fixed with a dose healthy of positive self-esteem. It’s a health matter, and here on the eve of my fortieth year, I've learned I have to make changes so I don't, you know, die. Because what good if finally being able to afford a pedicure if I lose a foot to adult onset diabetes?" ~in Jen Lancaster's own words

I love everything the Jen Lancaster writes. Her words are dripping with sarcasm and self-deprecation. I especially love her use of footnotes. This book did not disappoint and was gut achingly funny at times. As someone who has struggled with weight her whole life, I appreciated the lengths that she was going to and I think I have had some of the same experiences.

Shanghai Girls - Lisa Yee

May and Pearl, two sisters living in Shanghai in the mid-1930s, are beautiful, sophisticated, and well-educated, but their family is on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoping to improve their social standing, May and Pearl’s parents arrange for their daughters to marry “Gold Mountain men” who have come from Los Angeles to find brides. But when the sisters leave China and arrive at Angel’s Island (the Ellis Island of the West)--where they are detained, interrogated, and humiliated for months--they feel the harsh reality of leaving home. And when May discovers she’s pregnant the situation becomes even more desperate. The sisters make a pact that no one can ever know. A novel about two sisters, two cultures, and the struggle to find a new life in America while bound to the old, Shanghai Girls is a fresh, fascinating adventure from beloved and bestselling author Lisa See.

I loved See's book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Whereas that book took me back many generations to a Chinese culture of closeted women with bound feet and their struggle for survival, this was more to the middle of the last century with different struggles for survival. I really didn't know a lot of the history of that time in China and the way that Chinese Americans were treated. There is a lot of historical accuracy in See's novels that I appreciate. She does her homework and makes me feel what it was like from the perspective of a character who lived it.

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

The novel is told from the point of view of three narrators: Aibileen Clark, a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children, and who has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson, an African-American maid whose back-talk towards her employers results in her having to frequently change jobs, exacerbating her desperate need for work as well as her family's struggle with money; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a young white woman and recent college graduate who, after moving back home, discovers that a maid that helped raise her since childhood has abruptly disappeared and her attempts to find her have come to nought. The stories of the three women intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help", with complex relations of power, money, emotion, and intimacy tying together the white and black families of Jackson.

I am delighted that this book has been made into a movie! I can't wait to see it. (Maybe it will be my birthday treat to me?) The characters grabbed me from the first pages. I love that this is told from the perspective of three different characters. The people in this book came alive y'all! I am even starting to think in a Southern accent. I was sent my copy of this book from my book loving friend Jenners of Life with Books, and I am willing to send it on to someone new. Jenners is a hilarious blogger. I encourage you to check her out! (Note: my copy of the book has an alternate cover).

Life After Yes - Aiden Donelly Rowley

What could have been a ho-hum story of a golden girl's engagement to an equally golden boy is tempered and hardened by the specter of 9/11. Quinn is the beautiful, smart, successful young lawyer; daughter of smart, successful, wealthy parents; living a fiction-perfect life as a junior partner in a major law firm; and engaged to Sage, an equally blessed investment banker. All is according to plan until a September morning when her father meets his broker for breakfast at the top of the World Trade Center. Life shatters, but of course life goes on. In her grief, Quinn questions and tests the love and loyalty of everyone, and acts out in ways that others are willing to tolerate, for a while. Finally, she becomes aware of the grief and burdens that others bear, and finds and accepts the flaws in herself and others that her previous self would not have. First-novelist Rowley creates credible characters and situations with sharp dialogue and apt descriptions, and wisely lets a personal perspective embody the story of a national disaster.

Aiden is another blogger that I discovere. She writes at Ivy League Insecurities. She has such a way of writing that I love. She always asks questions in her posts that elicit great answers. She was the inspiration behind my post questions. This is her debut novel and is a pretty good one. It is a world that I really am not familiar with, yet there are a few parts back in my neck of the woods, so that felt familiar. There were times when I felt that the main character was a bit overly angst about her impending marriage, but still I was rooting for her to make sense of her life. In the end, I found that I really liked this character, as flawed as she was, and thought this was an interesting perspective about the most recent past with the backdrop of 9/11.

The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd

In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their South Carolina peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic.

I really got sucked into this story. The main character is really brave to go on the run with her black nanny in the hopes of finding out more about her dead mother. The characters are rich, and warm, and feel familiar even though they come from a world away from my own life. As always, the book is better than the movie, in my opinion, but the movie is a good retelling of the story.

Garden Spells - Sarah Addison Allen

Two gifted sisters draw on their talents to belatedly forge a bond and find their ways in life in Allen's easygoing debut novel. Thirty-four-year-old Claire Waverley manifests her talent in cooking; using edible flowers, Claire creates dishes that affect the eater in curious ways. But not all Waverley women embrace their gifts; some, including Claire's mother, escape the family's eccentric reputation by running away. She abandoned Claire and her sister when they were young. Consequently, Claire has remained close to home, unwilling to open up to new people or experiences. Claire's younger sister, Sydney, however, followed in their mother's footsteps 10 years ago and left for New York, and after a string of abusive, roustabout boyfriends, returns to Bascom, N.C., with her five-year-old daughter, Bay. As Sydney reacquaints herself with old friends and rivals, she discovers her own Waverley magic. Claire, in turn, begins to open up to her sister and in the process learns how to welcome other possibilities. Though Allen's prose can lean toward the pedestrian and the romance subplots feel perfunctory, the blending of horticultural folklore, the supernatural and a big dollop of Southern flavor should find favor with a wide swath of readers.

I really liked the story of these sisters. The fact that they had some mystery surrounding them was very intriguing. This is one of those novels that I could see turned into a movie as I was reading it. It had me thinking of what life would be like if I had these 'powers' that the sisters share.

Ready to win? All you need to do to enter is answer the following question and indicate which two books that you would like to win. Winner will be chosen at random from all comments on this post through Saturday, August 13th and the two books that you indicate are what you will be sent. You MUST have your email turned on in your profile to win, or provide your email in your comment. Winner will be announced next week.

What is the best book that you have read in the past year? or

What is the best book that you recall reading as a child?