Dewey Winner!

Thank you all so much for entering my giveaway. I hope you found some reviews you enjoyed and will come back again.

Now, on to the results! My trusty randomizer has chosen Jacqueline in Atlanta as the winner. I have sent an email asking for your mailing address. Please respond within 48 hours. If I don't hear from you by then, the second place person will be sent an email.

Check back soon for my next giveaway!

Love Junkie by Rachel Resnick

Rachel Resnick hits her forties single, broke, depressed, childless, a train wreck. After an ex-boyfriend breaks into her home and vandalizes it, Resnick takes the time to look back over her romantic and sexual history to ask the question: What is wrong with me? Thus begins her quest to uncover the roots of love and sex addiction, every bit as toxic and damaging to life as heroin. Love Junkie charts Rachel Resnick's harrowing emotional journey from addiction to intimacy, from despair to hope. By peeling back one painful layer after another, what she discovers is a glaring pattern: she is addicted to the fantasy of romantic bliss, marriage, and children. Yet all her relationships proved impossible. At the root of her issues: a Dickensian childhood experience. Finally she confronts her alcoholic mentally ill mother' suicide. In this groundbreaking, compulsively readable memoir, Resnick flays her own psyche in search of the truth, cracking open one of the more elusive and pervasive addictions of our time.

I received this book as part of Elle's early reader program. I was picked this time as a non-fiction reviewer. They pick a theme for the month and send you three books to read on that topic. At the end of the year, you also review the top non-fiction books from the other months. This months theme, loosely, was mental illness and addiction. I probably wouldn't have picked this book up if it weren't for this program.

I have pretty much been staying away from the "I had a terrible childhood and now it ruined my life" type books. I have found them, for the most part, to be depressingly similar. The authors put themselves in poor situations time and time again, and wonder why the outcome never changes. This one wasn't much different.

Resnick claims to realize she is a love junkie, and maybe she really does see the problem and want to change. However, this book seems to be written more to shock, and as a catalog of her sexual exploits. The writing also rambled a bit, switching from past to present without much rhyme or reason. Overall, it was a quick read, but not very satisfying. 2 stars

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his parents are, and why he was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony's Orphanage for boys. He longs for a family to call his own and is terrified of the day he will be sent alone into the world.

But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents persuades the monks at the orphanage to release the boy and to give Ren some hope. But is Benjamin really who he says he is? Journeying through a New England of whaling towns and meadowed farmlands, Ren is introduced to a vibrant world of hardscrabble adventure filled with outrageous scam artists, grave robbers, and petty thieves. If he stays, Ren becomes one of them. If he goes, he's lost once again. As Ren begins to find clues to his hidden parentage he comes to suspect that Benjamin not only holds the key to his future, but to his past as well.

From the description I thought this book would be something I really enjoyed and I couldn't wait to read it. I have been disappointed though. I thought it would have some mystery with Ren looking for clues to his parents, and some adventure along the way. What it turned out to be was the story of some petty thieves that really weren't all that interesting to me. The storyline of Ren's parents doesn't even really get brought up until the last hundred pages.

There were some mildly interesting minor characters, but those couldn't keep me reading. As a disclaimer, I haven't currently finished this book. Maybe it all comes together beautifully in the end. But, even though I don't know who Ren's parent's are, I don't really want to spend the time reading the last hundred pages to find out. 2 stars

Booking Through Thursday...

What, if any, memorable or special book have you ever gotten as a present? Birthday or otherwise. What made it so notable? The person who gave it? The book itself? The “gift aura?”

I honestly can't remember a single book that someone else has purchased for me that I haven't asked for. I have so many books that unless I give someone a title there isn't really any way for them to know what I have read, or already own. Besides, half the fun of getting new books is browsing to see what treasure you might come across!

Resistance by Agnes Humbert

Agnes Humbert was an art historian in Paris during the German occupation in 1940. Though she might well have weathered the oppressive regime, Humbert was stirred to action by the atrocities she witnessed. In an act of astonishing bravery, she joined forces with several colleagues to form an organized resistance, very likely the first such group to fight back against the occupation. (In fact, their newsletter, Resistance, gave the French Resistance its name.)

In the throes of their struggle for freedom, the members of Humbert's group were betrayed to the Gestapo; Humbert herself was imprisoned. In immediate, electrifying detail, Humbert describes her time in prison, her deportation to Germany, where for more than two years she endured a string of brutal labor camps, and the horror of discovering that seven of her friends were executed by a firing squad. But through the direst of conditions, and ill health in the labor camps, Humbert retains hope for herself, for her friends, and for humanity.

Most of my WWII reading has been set in Russia, so this was a nice change of pace. I really enjoyed the format of the book. The entries ranges in length from a couple of paragraphs to a couple of pages. The diary layout made it easy to place the events Humbert wrote about within the timeline of the war.

Obviously, Humbert wasn't allowed to write while she was imprisoned, but the detail in her recollections make you feel as if you are right in the middle of the action. I especially enjoyed the brief glimpses of the other prisoners. She was able to illustrate the unpredictability of prison life by the stories of her friends coming and going.

The language in this book was very beautiful and descriptive without being over powering. As credit to the translator, the wording didn't feel clumsy or forced. If you have any interest in WWII this is worth reading. 4 stars.

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World Giveaway!

As a part of the Book Giveaway Carnival I am giving away a copy of Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron.

Please leave a comment on this post to enter. As always, if you blog about this giveaway and link back here I will give you another entry. Please make sure you have either your email address in the post or a blog address that includes your email. If I can't get a hold of you, your entry won't count. This contest is open to the US and Canada. I will take entries through 5 pm mountain time on November 9th and will use my randomizer to pick a winner that evening. Good Luck!

Monique and the Mango Rains Winner

Thank you all for entering my contest. The randomizer has spoken, and Sandra at Fresh Ink Books is the winner. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did!

Check back in the next week or so for my next giveaway of

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World.