[Waiting On Wednesday #4] Tenth of December by George Saunders (2013)

Tags

book, george saunders, humor, recommendations, satire, TBR, upcoming books, wit

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

Tenth of December
by George Saunders
Publication Date: January 8, 2013
Publisher: Random House Publishers.
preorder a copy via Amazon.
Goodreads.

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.

In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In “Home,” a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

[From the Review Pile #1] Everybody Says Hello by Michael Kun (2012)

Tags

book, humor, recommendations, satire, TBR, wit

From the Review Pile is a meme hosted by Stepping Out of the Page every Thursday. The aim of this meme is to showcase books that you’ve received for review (or if you don’t receive review books, any book that you own and really want to read/review) but haven’t yet got around to reading, in order to give the book some extra publicity.

I know that a lot of you have a huge pile of books that you want to read/review, but it understandably takes a while to get around to reading them all – here you can give a book (or two!) some of the publicity that it deserves, even if you haven’t read it yet!

Everybody Says Hello (2012)
by Michael Kun
Publication Date: April 16, 2012
Publisher: Livingston Pr
purchase a copy via Amazon.
Goodreads.


Sid Straw, the author of the correspondence that forms Everybody Says Hello, isn t Everyman, but he is someone everyone knows. He tries just a little too hard, says just a little too much, and that extra effort and those extra words are often his undoing. If only Sid could get out of his own way, his life would be wonderful. While Sid Straw may frustrate you at times, you ll end up rooting for him the same way you root for your own equally imperfect friends. -description from Amazon.


My Thoughts: Everybody Says Hello has been on my wishlist for a while. And when I received an email from the author asking if I would like a review copy of it, I must’ve danced around the room for five minutes before settling down to write a coherent reply (with the room door closed of course, I am not that bold). I was even happier when I got home from my month-long trip to Hong Kong to see the package waiting for me. Now it sits on top of my TBR pile, and I can’t wait to get to it very, very soon. But since I have other books demanding my attention before I can get to it, I just needed this opportunity to show it off.

I put Everybody Says Hello on my Goodreads to-read list because of an article on BOOK RIOT talking about humor in novels (I challenge you to read that article and not have this overwhelming desire to read Kun’s work). I LOVE humor, not the I-am-going-to-make-people-call-this-book-hilarious-but-it’s-actually-just-ridiculousness trap I keep falling into whenever I read book blurbs on back covers. How am I supposed to resist if someone calls Michael Kun “one of the funniest writers in America” and gives him credit for making her “get off the bus because [she] was laughing“?

There’s also a giveaway for Everybody Says Hello on Goodreads until June 15th, click here to enter before time runs out! (Boy, do I sound like a TV marketer)

Do you have a review book that you would love to share? Join in on the meme!

[review] A Long Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan (2011)

Tags

aliens, book, book review, dystopian, fairytale, fairytales, literature, mystery, review, robots, romance, satire, sci-fi, science fiction, sleep, sleeping beauty, young adult

A Long, Long Sleep (2011) by Anna Sheehan Hardcover Edition
Publisher: Candlewick Press

buy a copy via Amazon.

synopsis via Goodreads.

It should have been a short suspended-animation sleep. But this time Rose wakes up to find her past is long gone– and her future full of peril.

Rosalinda Fitzroy has been asleep for sixty-two years when she is woken by a kiss. Locked away in the chemically induced slumber of a stasis tube in a forgotten subbasement, sixteen-year-old Rose slept straight through the Dark Times that killed millions and utterly changed the world she knew. Now, her parents and her first love are long gone, and Rose– hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire– is thrust alone into a future in which she is viewed as either a freak or a threat. 

Okay, NOW I see why this was on a blog’s Top Books of 2011 list. In many ways, THIS was the YA novel I have been waiting to read. I don’t mean I was awaiting its release or anything, but I have been waiting for that book that had a deeper message aside from “I love you, and you love me, we are only 15, but we love each other for all eternity.” A Long, Long Sleep is the book that encompasses all the wonderful things in YA literature and fuses them into so much more. It is a book that leaves you pondering long after the last page is turned.