A Matrimonial Giveaway

Serendipitously in conjunction with my 1 year blogiversary, Joshua Henkin has generously offered me a signed copy of his New York Times Notable book, Matrimony, which has recently been released in paperback, to give away here. While I've yet to read the copy of it waiting for me on my bookshelf, I've heard countless great things about Matrimony and I'm excited to have the opportunity to host this giveaway!

Book Description:

It's the fall of 1986, and Julian Wainwright, an aspiring writer, arrives at Graymont College in New England. Here he meets Carter Heinz, with whom he develops a strong but ambivalent friendship, and beautiful Mia Mendelsohn, with whom he falls in love. Spurred on by a family tragedy, Julian and Mia's love affair will carry them to graduation and beyond, taking them through several college towns, over the next fifteen years. Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in the new millennium, Matrimony is a stunning novel of love and friendship, money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It is a richly detailed portrait of what it means to share a life with someone-to do it when you're young, and to try to do it afresh on the brink of middle age.


A few of the many blogger reviews:

Musings of a Bookish Kitty
The Literate Housewife Review
Devourer of Books
The 3 R's: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness


If you're interested in winning Matrimony, just leave a comment on this post any time before midnight (EST) next Monday, October 13th. For a second entry, link to this post from your blog and let me know that you've linked it. Please make sure that your comment includes some way for me to get in touch with you if you win, whether it's your blog URL or an e-mail address.

It's my Blogiversary!

A brilliant thing has happened and I nearly missed it! As of today, October 6th, Leafing Through Life has lived for a year. I tell you, it sure doesn't feel like I've been blogging for a year, so I guess maybe it's true that time flies when you're having fun. It's been a great year. I've successfully reviewed almost all of the books that I've read since setting off on this endeavor. Actually, CJ, one of my first book bloggy friends tagged me for a meme that seems just built for a blogiversary post. The meme is simple - just list 5 ways blogging has affected you, either positively or negatively.

1. Well, first, is the reason I started blogging in the first place. I graduated from college in 2006 and the year between then and when I began this blog, I realized how much I missed writing. Blogging has given me an outlet for my creative energies at the same time as it has made me a more thoughtful reader. As I read now, I find that I'm not simply being entertained but am really digging into what I read and coming out with larger themes and better understanding because of my concious effort to process what I read so I can write a good review.

2. This one always seems obvious to me, but it certainly must be said. The book blogging community is just awesome and getting to know each and every one of you I've had the privilege of interacting with has been a pleasure. It's great to find a group of people as passionate about books as all of you are, and I look forward to many more years of that!

3. This one falls more on the negative. I'd be hard pressed to describe myself as the most consistent blogger and even just popping in when I have time, I'm stunned at how much time blogging takes up. Between writing my own posts, keeping up with my feed reader, and leaving what few comments I'm able to on everyone's blogs, blogging really takes up a lot of time. I really respect those of you who seem to have time to work and/or take care of your families, read a dizzying amount of books beyond what I could ever hope to read in a year, and blog on a far more consistent basis than I do (not to mention your extensive commenting on others' blogs!).

4. Being a part of a community of bloggers has renewed my interest in reading a lot of books that before I might have sworn off. Eva with her enthusiasm for non-fiction definitely put it in my mind to reach for more non-fiction this year. Bloggers like Danielle have renewed my interest in reading literary classics. Nymeth could probably make me want to read the phone book, but other than that, her reviews of fantasy and fairy tales have inspired me to take a second look at those genres. Countless others have had a hand in making me want to try short stories again, seek out the best sci-fi, and even take up a mystery or two (which, by the way, I would never realize so many types of mysteries seem to exist were it not for my mystery-loving book blogger pals).

5. Last but not least, blogging has affected my be showing me that I can have an effect. This probably shouldn't have been as big of a surprise as it is. I guess a part of me thought, when I started this, that I'd just be blogging off in a special internet vacuum. I continue to be surprised when authors pop in my comments and in my e-mail box. I never realized that I could be such a positive (or negative) force for their books just by posting what reviews that I do or that the authors themselves would be interested my opinions as posted in my humble internet abode here. Stuff like that, and the impressive undertakings of other bloggers like Natasha have shown me what considerable effects bloggers can have for the publishing industry and even for the world at large. Who knew?


Thanks to everybody who has been a part of my first year of blogging. It wouldn't be near so much fun without you, nor would I have had the motivation to soldier on with it even when life got busier if it hadn't been for your company and your great examples to follow. With any luck, I hope there will be a good many more years of fruitful book blogging here!

Stay tuned for some more Blogiversary fun later today!

Tops of 2008: Weekly Geeks 19 and 20

I missed the Weekly Geeks last week, but seeing as its so very closely intertwined with this week's "assignment" I figured it couldn't hurt to just lump them together. Last week, Dewey asked the Weekly Geeks to come up with lists of our favorite books published in 2008. Here's my list (and yes, it is in a particular order) with links to my reviews.

1. Tears of the Desert by Halima Bashir
2. Ellington Boulevard by Adam Langer
3. The Cactus Eaters by Dan White
4. Queen of the Road by Doreen Orion
5. The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

So, that's mine. How about yours? That's right, Weekly Geeks #20 encourages us to encourage our readers, even those who aren't Weekly Geeks (oh, the horror!) to make their own lists of their favorite books from among those published this year. Should you do so, you'll make the ultimate goal, a list of the book blogosphere's top books of 2008 an even better representation of our collective opinions. So, please, make a list of your own and post it on your blog. When you do, leave the URL on the Mr. Linky for Week 19 and let your book bloggerly voice be heard, not to mention, be entered in another one of those spiffy Hachette box of books giveaways that Dewey always seems to have going on. Of course, you can (and probably should!) visit the post for all the finer details. Oh, and if you happened to actually hear about this for the first time here (what, you live in a cave? Cool!) and choose to make a list, please do let Dewey know that I sent you so I'll get more book blogging street cred another entry in the spiffy giveaway.

Uglies and stuff

Now, I'd nearly decided not to bother commenting on Scott Westerfeld's Uglies. I mean, hasn't everybody and their brother's cousin's best friend's second cousin talked about already? It was a decent read about a future in which at the age of 16 everyone undergoes an operation to become pretty which pretty much renders everyone almost the same, thus alleviating many of the problems that existed in "Rusty" (which I take to be our current) society stemming from differences in the way people looked. Tally Youngblood eagerly awaited the day when she would be transformed into a pretty, but her friendship with the runaway Shay, who decides that there are more important things than just looking the same as everyone else, stands in the way of Tally's future as a pretty. In the process of trying to find Shay in the Smoke, a community of runaway uglies who have rejected the opportunity to turn pretty, Tally learns some unexpected truths about the operation and just what it entails which cause her to think twice about her present and her future. Not a bad read, as a matter of fact, I thought the premise was quite insightful. The writing, however, seems to limit Uglies to just what it is, young adult fiction for, well, young adults. I guess I prefer my YA to be a bit more age-transcendant, which it often happens to be. For its target audience, this is a page-turning adventure story with a stimulating premise that ponders what happens when we exhaust our resources and corrupt our environment beyond its breaking point. For grown-ups who enjoy YA, I'd have to say that, while the story is engaging, I found the writing a bit on the shallow side. Ah, but I'm sure you could find a hundred others who disagree with my opinion.

Now, if you're wondering about my twisted reasoning behind pseudo-reviewing this book after all, I'd have to tell you it has to do very little with the book and a lot more with the piece Uglies author Scott Westerfeld wrote on YA for Obama which is anything but shallow. I saw the link to YA for Obama at Sarah Miller's blog (I think...) and have been finding many of the YA authors' blog posts on the coming presidential election and why they happen to have leanings toward voting for Obama to be very worth reading. I found Sarah Zarr's and Scott Westerfeld's to be particularly interesting, but I'm sure there's even more good stuff there if you happen to want to have a look around over there, and apparently there's even more good stuff yet to come. Maybe not all rock solid fact but valid in the insightful editorial sense.

Disclaimer: Uh-oh. I think I may have just tipped my political "hand," so to speak. It's not my intention to do a lot of politics-talking here, but it's hard to avoid mentioning it at all when it's such an important part of life here in the US of A these days. I'm kind of surprised I held out this long.

Shades of Mediocrity

After one week of a relatively acceptable amount of activity, it seems that the blog is gathering dust again. You want to know why, you say? Well, you're probably not actually saying that. It's most likely that you care not at all, but if you thought that your lack of caring would be followed up by my own non-disclosure, you must not know me very well.

The first reason? Why, last week was Fair week. Yes, that's right, Fair with a capital F. My town has a rather ginormous fair (wait, I mean Fair) that traditionally takes place the last week of September. It traditionally rains for most of said Fair week, but not this year. So, I didn't stay home too much last week. As a matter of fact, by the end of the week I was hoping it would be possible to get a new pair of feet and maybe a new stomach to go with them. The Fair is about the biggest thing that ever happens in my town - I may have mentioned that it's huge and for one reason or another, my school district was one of a couple that actually had a whole week off for the Fair. I mean, now doesn't that seem pretty major? So yes, lots of Fairgoing and devouring of mercilessly deep fried food proved a major disruption to my reading and my blogging, which I don't regret in the least, which is not to say it wasn't somewhat of a relief to finally arrive at the weekend during which I got to cuddle up with a book or two and stay inside when the rain finally did arrive.

The other reason? Mediocrity. Everything that I've read lately has been uh...just okay for me. Not terrible. Not great. And certainly not inspiring of the lengthy contemplative reviews that have become my trademark. I feel like this happens to me all too often where I'm just stuck in a "nothing extraordinary" reading rut wherein nothing I read provokes a strong reaction one way or the other. The books are far from bad enough to put down without finishing but not good enough to feel especially rewarding when I finally flip the last page. The unfortunate thing is some of said books that I would describe as mediocre are pretty well-liked among readers and bloggers. So I guess I'm just the odd reader out with them. Anybody else get mired in this feeling of reading mediocrity? I'm starting to wonder if it's the books at all or if it's just me...