Saturday, April 14, 2012

In My Mailbox #26

Whew, I'm back from my spring break/senior trip to Hawaii! (And still jet-lagged after an overnight flight and a six-hour time difference.) The trip and my 18th birthday were great, thanks for asking. I came home to a stack of ARCs, so I have much reading to catch up on even in my sleepy state!
This is a three weeks edition of IMM, by the way.

For review:
The Orphanmaster by Jean Zimmerman (publisher)
Mostly interesting because it's set in New Amsterdam.
The Folded Earth by Anuradha Roy (Free Press Blog Tours)
I absolutely LOVED Roy's An Atlas of Impossible Longing last year!!!
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall (GoodReads First Look)
I'm interested in folklore and mythology, so I'm hoping this will be a decent read.
I, Iago by Nicole Galland (GoodReads First Look)
I enjoy my retellings.
The Bird Saviors by William J. Cobb (LibraryThing Early Reviewers)
Hopefully this won't turn out to be overkill on the weird sci-fi bildungsromans, since I've recently read The Age of Miracles and Salvation City.

Won:
A Good American by Alex George (thanks, Popcorn Reads!)
Looks like a nice historical fiction epic.

Many thanks to Amy at Black Sheep Dances:
West of Here by Jonathan Evison
Looks like another good historical fiction read.
Until the Next Time by Kevin Fox

Purchased:
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
25 cents at the local library.
Lord Emsworth and Others by P.G. Wodehouse
Also 25 cents at the local library, and I've been wanting to try out Wodehouse's books.
Aloha 'Oe, The Song at Pier 10 by John Tanaka
Historical fiction romance about Queen Liliuokalani (I almost spelled that right the first time!). The romance part doesn't appeal much to me, but the book was just calling from its place at the Polynesian Cultural Center shop... 
Myths and Legends of Hawaii by W.D. Westervelt
Another buy from the Polynesian Cultural Center. I loved that place - totally recommend it, even though it's quite expensive.
ABC-CLIO World History Companion to Utopian Movements by Daniel W. Hollis
I might be, erm...slightly obsessed with utopias. Even though this is a reference book, I'm really enjoying just reading it all the way through. Slowly.

From RandomBuzzers:
Crow by Barbara Wright
North Carolina historical fiction! About the end of Reconstruction, no less, when blacks actually had a lot of rights and political positions just before Jim Crow laws set in.

Mooched:
God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiaquan by Jonathan D. Spence
This kind of goes along with the utopian book. Hong Xiaquan apparently thought he was the younger brother of Christ and sparked the Taiping Rebellion, establishing a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom around Nanjing that actually managed to last for about thirteen years.

2 comments:

  1. Gah! So many books! Enjoy your reads =D

    Drop by my IMM?
    http://tumblinginbooks.blogspot.com/2012/04/in-my-mailbox-17.html

    ReplyDelete