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Please feel free to email me at jen(at)devourerofbooks.com for any questions or comments. I will accept certain books for review, however please read my review policy before contacting me to review your book.

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Quick Reminder! Classic Reads Book Club!

4896592960 8bb38a3b83 m pictureJust a quick reminder, Trish will be running the third session of the Classic Reads Book Club. The book for this quarter is “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood. I thought this book was fantastic when I read it a couple of years ago, and I can’t wait to get started reading it again.

We will be starting discussing Sections I-IV on Monday, August 23rd. Check out the whole schedule and try to fit it in if you can, this is a fantastic book, and one that is sure to prompt great discussion.

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TSS: Ahh, Relaxation.

Yay! A weekend at home!

The last two weekends we’ve been out of town, first in Indianapolis, then in Cincinnati. Although it was fun, I’m quite relieved to actually be at home this weekend (and NOT have a 4-6 hour car drive with a one year old). We’ve been mostly taking it easy this weekend, yesterday I had a massage and took advantage of Illinois’ first ever(?) tax free week.

Today is going to be relaxing too (as relaxing as things get with a young toddler). We’re headed down to the lake for some fun in the sun. We’ll be there with all four of Daniel’s grandparents, plus his uncle, so there may just be enough people to watch him that I’ll be able to get a little reading in.

I really needed this relaxation, because this has been a busy week here!

Last Sunday I announced my feature for the month of October: My Kind of Book, a Celebration of Chicago Authors.

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Then, of course, I spent this week featuring titles from one of my favorite imprints, Harper Perennial. Not only did I review five relatively recent Harper Perennial books (and give a teaser for an upcoming book), but I also announced a big giveaway of some of my favorite Harper Perennial books. Here are the books I reviewed, in case you missed any. Covers link to the review:

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Harper Perennial Favorites Giveaway

4866216157 1237886da1 m pictureIn case you’ve missed it, I’ve been featuring books from one of my favorite imprints, Harper Perennial, all week. The lovely Erica, Marketing Manager over at Harper Perennial is sponsoring a giveaway to help some of you get acquainted with some of my favorite Harper Perennial books – she should also get the credit for the category ideas.

Readers in the US and Canada can enter to win one of four prize packs:

My Favorite: Bad Girls Let Loose in Europe

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Everything is Going to be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour by Rachel Shukert
Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky

My Favorite: Boys Coming of Age in Unusual Circumstances

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Lake Overturn by Vestal McIntrye
The Dolphin People by Torston Krol

My Favorite: Devastating Loss and Physical Displacement with Gorgeous Writing

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The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar
City of Refuge by Tom Piazza

My Favorite: Complex Relationships Being Reevaluated

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The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver
The Blessings of the Animals by Katrina Kittle (note: this is the only one I haven’t read yet, but my favorite Indie bookstore has it as one of their staff picks this month. The link goes to their review).

I’m also going to throw in

My Favorite: Short Stories Told in Letters

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What He’s Poised to Do by Ben Greenman

For the international crowd.

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Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin – Book Review

4866216157 1237886da1 m picture4887790081 f8fa34d81e m pictureLean on Pete by Willy Vlautin
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of Harper Collins

Life has been tough for Charley. His mother has been gone – not dead, but not around – for as long as he can remember, and his father is not the most reliable of parents. In addition to moving them around a lot and cutting off contact between Charley and his aunt, Charley’s father doesn’t always come home, sometimes preferring to stay out all night, or even for days at a time, with lady friends, leaving Charley short of both food and money. To fill his time before school starts, Charley begins hanging out down by the racetrack, where he picks up a job with Del, an ornery old man who treats his horses like commodities – and not very valuable ones at that. Charley, though, bonds quickly with one of Del’s horses, Lean on Pete. When his father is brutally assaulted by the husband of one of the women he is sleeping with, it is in Pete that Charley finds solace.

“Lean on Pete” was not the easiest book to read. Charley’s life was a very difficult one, and he was in a position in which no 15 year old should be placed, especially after his father was hospitalized. There was nobody around to take care of him, nobody who really even knew he needed taking care of. He found himself essentially homeless because he was too afraid to return to the scene of his father’s assault. Eventually he found himself entirely on his own. The way that Del and others around him used and abused their horses, too, was extremely difficult to read. Lean on Pete and the other horses were not living beings to Del, but instruments to make him money. He was less purposefully cruel than neglectful to the point of cruelty. It is hard to know whether or not to recommend this to horse lovers, because Charley’s connection with Pete was very moving, but a lot of horses are treated very badly throughout the book

I tried over and over while reading this to convince myself that this book was set in the past, that these sorts of things couldn’t happen in modern U.S. society, but given the discussion that Charley had with his father about possibly getting cell phones (an idea that his somewhat-paranoid father nixed) just couldn’t support this.

Vlautin matches his prose perfectly to his subject, with a high degree of realism that made me feel more that I was experiencing Charley’s story than that I was reading it. This work of fiction could easily have been memoir, for how convincingly real it was.

Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.*
Amazon.*

This review was done with a book received from the publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

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What He’s Poised to Do by Ben Greenman – Book Review

4880982786 347b90edc9 m picture4866216157 1237886da1 m pictureWhat He’s Poised to Do by Ben Greenman
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of Harper Collins

“What He’s Poised to Do” is a lovely, intriguing collection of short stories by Ben Greenman. What makes this collection unique is how many of the stories were set up as stories or monologues for one of the characters to ask questions of or explain actions to an often-unseen other. The collection was very well-edited, placing the stories in such an order that the more epistolary stories didn’t all stack up on one another and begin to seem redundant.

There is a very clever blog that has been set up to help promote “What He’s Poised to Do” called ‘Letters With Character,’ based, obviously, on the epistolary nature of many of Greenman’s stories. ‘Letters With Character’ allows real people to write letters to fictional characters. The most recent letter is written to the Quiet Old Lady Whispering Hush from “Goodnight Moon” and definitely made me laugh when it showed up in my feed reader.

Take a look at ‘Letters With Character,’ maybe submit a letter, and then pick up “What He’s Poised to Do” to see how Greenman uses letters in this collection.

Buy this book from:
Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound
.*
Amazon
.*

This review was done with a book received from the publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

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