Queen Pin Giveaway (ends September 18th )

Publisher's Summary. Jemeker Thompson-Hairston paid a heavy price for her involvement in the drug game. Learning from her sources of a federal investigation, Jemeker went on the run. It was love for her young son that brought her back to Los Angeles, even though she knew she would be arrested. A subsequent 12-year sentence would cost her not only her legitimate business and the fortune she'd amassed through the drug trade, but the most precious thing of all: time with her child. But not all was lost. Fortunately, while Thompson-Hairston was serving out her sentence, one pivotal moment helped her turn her life around, setting her on a path to help and inspire others like her.

Giveaway Rules. Today I am giving away THREE copies of this fascinating book!

Entry: Comment with your email address in the body of the comment (you can list it as mary123 (at) yahoo(dot)com). If you do not list your email address your entry will not count.

Extra Entries: Sign up to follow my blog (or let me know that you are a current follower); follow me on twitter (DCMetroreader) and on Facebook (Metroreader). NOTE: These extra entries MUST be left in a separate comment or will not count.

The giveaway is open to Canadian and US residents only.
You must be 18 years of age or older.
NO P.O. Boxes for the winner’s mailing address.

Giveaway ends September 18th. Good Luck!

Mailbox Monday -- August 30th

The reason why I love Mondays -- Mailbox Monday hosted this month by Chick Loves Lit. Below are the following advance review copies that I received this week:

1) What a Difference a Dog Makes by Dana Jennings. Publisher's Summary. Our dogs come into our lives as “just the family pet,” but before we know it they become drinking buddies and fuzzy shrinks, playmates and Cheerios-munching vacuum cleaners, alarm clocks and sleeping partners. And, in their mys­terious and muttish ways, our dogs become our teachers.

When Dana Jennings and his son were both seriously ill—Dana with prostate cancer and his son with liver failure—their twelve-year-old miniature poodle Bijou became even more than a pet and teacher. She became a healing presence in their lives. After all, when you’re recovering from radical surgery and your life is uncertain, there’s no better medicine than a twenty-three-pound pooch who lives by the motto that it’s always best to play, even when you’re old and creaky, even when you’re sick and frightened.

In telling Bijou’s tale in all of its funny, touching, and neurotic glory, Jennings is telling the story of every dog that has ever blessed our lives. The perfect gift for animal lovers, What a Difference a Dog Makes is a narrative ode to our canine guardian angels.

Thanks to Random House!

2) The Tree by John Fowles. Publisher's Summary. Finally back in print, here is the 30th anniversary edition of The Tree—the renowned English novelist John Fowles’s (The Magus, The French Lieutenant’s Woman) moving meditation on the connection between the natural world and human creativity. An inspiring modern ecological classic, The Tree is both a powerful argument against taming the wild and a major author’s inspiring and beautifully written defense of “the joys of getting lost,” and of spontaneity in life and art.

Thanks to Harper Collins!

3) Becoming a Woman of Destiny by Suzan Johnson Cook. Publisher's Summary. Life is full of turning points—moments in time when our actions determine whether we grow wiser, make meaningful connections or peddle in place. Many women stumble during these stressful transitions rather than move forward into their destiny. but Suzan Johnson Cook, a.k.a “Dr. Sujay,” knows firsthand how to seize these opportunities.

Faith advisor to both President Barak Obama and former President Bill Clinton, Dr. Sujay is the first black woman to be senior pastor of the 200-year-old American Baptist Churches (a male-dominated realm), to be president of the 10,000-member Hampton University Ministers’ Conference (another male-dominated arena), to be appointed chaplain of the NYC Police Department and, now, to be appointed by President Obama as Ambassador-At-Large for the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom.

With each transition, Dr. Sujay has triumphed with the help of a tight circle of supportive friends as well as the guidance of her Biblical mentor, Deborah. In her new book, Becoming a Woman of Desting: Turning Life’s Trials into Triumphs, she shares the wisdom of Deborah—who, as prophet, judge, warrior and wife, is the ancient equivalent of the modern-day multi-tasking woman. She also shows women how they can harness the support of their peers through “Destiny Circles” and start building a life of success and spiritual fulfillment.

Thanks to the Penguin Group!

Pun Enchanted Evening Giveaway ends today!

Be sure to get your entry in here to win of two copies of this hilarious book!

Last Chance to Win Wrong by David H. Freedman

Be sure to get your entry in here to win a copy of this provocative book!

When I Stop Talking You'll Know I'm Dead

Publisher's Summary. Here is the story of Jerry Weintraub: the self-made, Brooklyn-born, Bronx-raised impresario, Hollywood producer, legendary deal maker, and friend of politicians and stars. No matter where nature has placed him--the club rooms of Brooklyn, the Mafia dives of New York's Lower East Side, the wilds of Alaska, or the hills of Hollywood--he has found a way to put on a show and sell tickets at the door. "All life was a theater and I wanted to put it up on a stage," he writes. "I wanted to set the world under a marquee that read: 'Jerry Weintraub Presents.'"

In WHEN I STOP TALKING, YOU'LL KNOW I'M DEAD, we follow Weintraub from his first great success at age twenty-six with Elvis Presley, whom he took on the road with the help of Colonel Tom Parker; to the immortal days with Sinatra and Rat Pack glory; to his crowning hits as a movie producer, starting with Robert Altman and Nashville, continuing with Oh, God!, The Karate Kid movies, and Diner, among others, and summiting with Steven Soderbergh and Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen.

Along the way, we'll watch as Jerry moves from the poker tables of Palm Springs (the games went on for days), to the power rooms of Hollywood, to the halls of the White House, to Red Square in Moscow and the Great Palace in Beijing-all the while counseling potentates, poets, and kings, with clients and confidants like George Clooney, Bruce Willis, George H. W. Bush, Armand Hammer, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, John Denver, Bobby Fischer . . .well, the list goes on forever.

And of course, the story is not yet over . . .as the old-timers say, "The best is yet to come."

As Weintraub says, "When I stop talking, you'll know I'm dead."

Review. Jerry Weintraub is the ultimate Hollywood self-made man rising from relatively modest beginnings in the Bronx, to working with Elvis and Sinatra, to being invited to sleepovers in the Whitehouse. In Weintraub’s memoir When I Stop Talking You’ll Know I’m Dead, the author shares his colorful stories of his rise to the top of the industry.

I listened to the audio book which is read by the author. Be warned if listening to the audio version that the author’s voice is not honey smooth, but rather features a fairly heavy Bronx accent. Still what Weintraub lacks in tonal qualities he more than makes up for in enthusiasm.

It is easy to see how he became a Hollywood dealmaker extraordinaire. Weintraub is a rare visionary who is able to think quickly on his feet. For instance, he once threw together a mega concert show in five days just to lift old Blue eyes out of the blues. But according to Weintraub, however, his true gift is being persistent. For instance, he called Col. Tom Parker for the better part of a year seeking to take Elvis on tour. Each time he was rebuffed. It was only a year later that Parker finally took him up on his offer. Now that’s tenacity!

When I Stop Talking You’ll Know I’m Dead is an entertaining memoir that offers numerous revealing glimpses of some of the greatest celebrities of today and yesterday.


Review copy provided courtesy of the publisher.

Great Neighbor Award

Awhile back Kritters Ramblings gave me The Great Neighbor award. THANK YOU Kritters!

The rules for this award stipulate I pass it onto 5 bloggers (in no particular order). Below are 5 blogs that inform and entertain my day:

1) Bermudaonion's Weblog
2) Carol's Notebook
3) Bookfan Mary
4) Bibliophile by the Sea
5) Reading at the Beach

The Kitchen Shrink

Amazon Product Description. In the past two decades, a seismic shift has occurred within the walls of our nation's hospitals and doctor's offices. The medical profession- once considered a sacred, cherished vocation-has devolved into a business motivated by a desire for profits. Even psychiatry, once the mainstay of the human interaction between doctor and patient, has fallen victim to rising costs and dictates by insurance sources.

How has medicine strayed so far from its roots? In The Kitchen Shrink, psychiatrist and lecturer Dora Calott Wang delves into what happened.

Through the prism of her own story, Wang elucidates key events in her professional life-the declining state of hospitals and clinics, the advent of managed care, and the rise of profits at the ex­pense of patient care-that highlight the medical profession's decline. Along the way we meet some of her patients, whose plights reflect the profession's growing indifference to the human lives at risk. There's Selena, whose grief over her mother's death and lack of family support make it difficult for her to take the medicine that keeps her body from rejecting her new liver, and Leonard, a schizophrenic with no health insurance who develops peritonitis and falls into a coma for three months. Each new story brings additional compromises as the medical landscape shifts under Wang's feet. She struggles with depression and exhaustion, witnesses the loss of top doctors who leave in frustration, and attempts to find a balance between work and home as it becomes ever clearer that she cannot untangle the uncertain future of her patients from her own.

Part personal story and part rallying cry, The Kitchen Shrink is an unflinchingly honest, passionate, and humane inside look at the unsettling realities of free-market medicine in today's America.

Review. No matter what side of the healthcare debate one is on nearly everyone agrees that the current medical system is unsustainable: soaring health care costs; overworked medical staff; and incomprehensible paper work -- to name just a few of the issues. The Kitchen Shrink by psychiatrist Dora Calott Wang explores the healthcare crisis as reflected through her personal career.

Wang argues that the healthcare is unlike any other industry and does not fit into the corporate for profit model. Sick patients are notoriously unreliable for getting well on an insurance company’s timetable. Moreover, on a philosophical level, Wang muses, “Should everything need to make a profit?” The author convincingly contends that it is to everyone’s detriment (apart from the insurance company’s shareholders) that medical services have been taken over by for profit companies. In particular, Wang explores the evolution of the psychiatric field from the Sigmund Freud psychoanalytic model to the modern day psychiatrist as solely a prescription writer. On the personal front Wang, a Yale educated psychiatrist trained in psychotherapy, fights to keep a limited amount of counseling into her practice, but has largely transitioned to writing ‘scipts in fifteen minute appointments.

While I enjoyed The Kitchen Shrink and found Wang’s story interesting, I do have several reservations about this book. First, at the end of the book the author acknowledges that “all patients in this book are composites of many persons, including actual patients, as well as people I have known outside my professional life.” This disclosure should have been noted in the beginning pages. Also, as a personal preference, fictious people and non-fiction don’t mix. I appreciate the need to change names and identifying details, but composite characters are fodder for novels not memoirs. Also, Wang's arguments occasionally derive from professional nostalgia. For instance, she laments the laws restricting medical interns’ work schedules to a maximum of 24 consecutive hours. Wang contends that these laws cause doctors to act as shift workers, rather than professionals who follow their patients care for days on end without sleep. While the shift worker analogy may be valid, the answer seems to lie in making better transitions between medical staff, not a return to sleep deprived doctors making life and death decisions. Lastly, at times, Wang’s descriptive writing seems a bit curious. For example, the author describes a friend as having “a sparkling lemon-wedge smile.” Yellow teeth do not usually strike most as “sparkling!”

The Kitchen Shrink is an interesting memoir of Wang’s professional evolution and a sad commentary on the present healthcare system.



Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (April 29, 2010), 368 pages.
Review copy provided courtesy of the publicist.

When I Stop Talking You'll Know I'm Dead Giveaway (ends 9/11)

Publisher's Summary. Here is the story of Jerry Weintraub: the self-made, Brooklyn-born, Bronx-raised impresario, Hollywood producer, legendary deal maker, and friend of politicians and stars. No matter where nature has placed him--the club rooms of Brooklyn, the Mafia dives of New York's Lower East Side, the wilds of Alaska, or the hills of Hollywood--he has found a way to put on a show and sell tickets at the door. "All life was a theater and I wanted to put it up on a stage," he writes. "I wanted to set the world under a marquee that read: 'Jerry Weintraub Presents.'"

In WHEN I STOP TALKING, YOU'LL KNOW I'M DEAD, we follow Weintraub from his first great success at age twenty-six with Elvis Presley, whom he took on the road with the help of Colonel Tom Parker; to the immortal days with Sinatra and Rat Pack glory; to his crowning hits as a movie producer, starting with Robert Altman and Nashville, continuing with Oh, God!, The Karate Kid movies, and Diner, among others, and summiting with Steven Soderbergh and Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen.

Along the way, we'll watch as Jerry moves from the poker tables of Palm Springs (the games went on for days), to the power rooms of Hollywood, to the halls of the White House, to Red Square in Moscow and the Great Palace in Beijing-all the while counseling potentates, poets, and kings, with clients and confidants like George Clooney, Bruce Willis, George H. W. Bush, Armand Hammer, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, John Denver, Bobby Fischer . . .well, the list goes on forever.

And of course, the story is not yet over . . .as the old-timers say, "The best is yet to come."

As Weintraub says, "When I stop talking, you'll know I'm dead."

With wit, wisdom, and the cool confidence that has colored his remarkable career, Jerry chronicles a quintessentially American journey, one marked by luck, love, and improvisation. The stories he tells and the lessons we learn are essential, not just for those who love movies and music, but for businessmen, entrepreneurs, artists . . . everyone.

Giveaway Rules. Today I am giving away THREE copies of this entertaining audio book!

Entry: Comment with your email address in the body of the comment (you can list it as mary123 (at) yahoo(dot)com). If you do not list your email address your entry will not count.

Extra Entries: Sign up to follow my blog (or let me know that you are a current follower); follow me on twitter (DCMetroreader) and on Facebook (Metroreader). NOTE: These extra entries MUST be left in a separate comment or will not count.

The giveaway is open to Canadian and US residents only.
You must be 18 years of age or older.
NO P.O. Boxes for the winner’s mailing address.

Giveaway ends September 11th. Good Luck!

Mailbox Monday -- August 23rd

The reason why I love Mondays -- Mailbox Monday hosted this month by Chick Loves Lit. Below are the following advance review copies that I received this week:

1) Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes. Publisher's Summary. On Thanksgiving Day 2007, as the country teeters on the brink of a recession, three generations of the Olson family gather. Eleanor and Gavin worry about their daughter, a single academic, and her newly adopted Indian child, and about their son, who has been caught in the imploding real-estate bubble. While the Olsons navigate the tensions and secrets that mark their relationships, seventeen-year-old Kijo Jackson and his best friend Spider set out from the nearby housing projects on a mysterious job. A series of tragic events bring these two worlds ever closer, exposing the dangerously thin line between suburban privilege and urban poverty, and culminating in a crime that will change everyone's life.

In her gripping new book, Jennifer Vanderbes masterfully lays bare the fraught lives of this complex cast of characters and the lengths to which they will go to protect their families. Strangers at the Feast is at once a heartbreaking portrait of a family struggling to find happiness and an exploration of the hidden costs of the American dream.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster!

2) Dogfight, A Love Story by Matt Burgess. Publisher's Summary. Alfredo Batista has some worries. Okay, a lot of worries. His older brother, Jose—sorry, Tariq—is returning from a stretch in prison after an unsuccessful robbery, a burglary that Alfredo was supposed to be part of. So now everyone thinks Alfredo snitched on his brother, which may have something to do with the fact that Alfredo is now dating Tariq’s ex-girlfriend, Isabel, who is eight months pregnant. Tariq’s violent streak is probably #1 worry on Alfredo’s list.

Also, he needs to steal a pit bull. For the homecoming dogfight.

Burgess brings to life the rich and vivid milieu of his hometown native Queens in all its glorious variety. Here is the real New York, a place where Pakistanis, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, An ­glos, African Americans, and West Indians scrap and mingle and love. But the real star here is Burgess’s incredible ear for language—the voices of his characters leap off the page in riotous, spot-on dialogue. The outer boroughs have their own language, where a polite greeting is fraught with menace, and an insult can be the expression of the most tender love.



3) The Wave by Susan Casey. Publisher's Summary. For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dis­missed these stories—waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea—including several that approached 100 feet.

As scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. These are extreme surfers who fly around the world trying to ride the ocean’s most destructive monsters. The pioneer of extreme surfing is the legendary Laird Hamilton, who, with a group of friends in Hawaii, figured out how to board suicidally large waves of 70 and 80 feet. Casey follows this unique tribe of peo­ple as they seek to conquer the holy grail of their sport, a 100­foot wave.

In this mesmerizing account, the exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed against scientists’ urgent efforts to understand the destructive powers of waves—from the tsunami that wiped out 250,000 people in the Pacific in 2004 to the 1,740-foot-wave that recently leveled part of the Alaskan coast.

Thanks to Random House!

4) Keep the Change by Steve Dublanica.

Thanks to Harper Collins!

Men and Dogs Giveaway Ends Today

Don't forget to get your entry in here!

The Body Shop Giveaway Ends Today!

Don't forget to get your entry in here.

Winners!

Congrats to the confirmed winners of the Put On Your Crown Giveaway:

page46
teakettle58
barracudaron

and to the Easy Lunchbox System Winner:
cheryl_429

Transsiberian

Review. In the theatrical thriller Transsiberian, Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer), an American couple, finished with their volunteer work in China, decide to take the long way home via a ride on the famous Transsiberian train from Beijing to Moscow. On the train they meet a sketchy couple: Carlos, a Spaniard, and Abby, a young American, who share their sleeping compartment. When Roy accidentally misses the train at a layover, Jessie leaves with Carlos and Abby to find him. She soon discovers that the couple is not all that they appear to be and, in fact, are hiding a dangerous secret. However, she is unable to disentangle herself from the situation. Shortly thereafter, Roy and Jessie reunite, but by then the mysterious Russian detective (Sir Ben Kingsley) enters the picture with plenty of questions for Jessie.

Transsiberian, which premiered at the 2008 Sundance festival, is a first class thriller that has it all: great actors giving standout performances; an exciting plot; and haunting, bleak, scenery (Russia in the dead of winter). The storyline has many twists and turns, but this is primarily a character driven film. Fortunately, the cast is up to the task. Kingsley turns in one of his finest performances as the scary-terrific detective with his own ax to grind. Mortimer, the female lead, is fabulous as the street-smart wife to Harrelson’s loving, but naïve husband. The only negative aspect about this film is the graphic, but in my opinion not gratuitous, violence.

If you like exciting thrillers and can tolerate some gruesome violence, then Transsiberian won’t disappoint!

Holly's Inbox: Scandal in the City

Publisher's Summary. Dear Holly, isn’t it shocking…?

Things are finally going Holly Denham’s way: she’s in love, she’s getting the recognition she deserves at work, and her friends and family have graciously opted to avoid disaster for the moment.

Just when Holly is starting to settle into her new life, scandal erupts and Holly finds herself—and her in box—at the center of a gossip whirlwind that threatens everything she’s worked so hard for.

Written entirely in emails, this follow-up to the UK smash hit Holly’s Inbox will keep you glued to its pages as the scandal running rampant in the city threatens to ruin Holly’s hard-earned and long-awaited happiness.

Review. “Holly’s the e-Bridget Jones” declares the New Your Post’s blub on the cover of Holly’s Inbox: Scandal in the City. Like Bridget Jones, Holly is a funny, single, British woman in an unglamorous career and a wayward boyfriend who causes her to occasionally drink too much and undertake wacky stunts such as hiding out in cupboards. Although the book runs over 500 pages, it moves quickly because it is told strictly in an e-mail format.

The story opens with our heroine’s, Holly Denham’s upward career trajectory (she’s about to be promoted from the clerical staff to management) and domestic bliss (she’s happily nesting with her longtime love Toby). Blissdom, however, is short-lived for Holly as her arch nemesis Tanya has her conniving clutches out for Holly’s new position and her man. But Holly is no wallflower. In a series of misadventures, Holly and her best gay pal Jason along with fellow worker bees from the receptionist pool scheme and plot to prevent Tanya from emerging victorious. Oftentimes, however, the plans run afoul, but the jokes never fail to miss their intended targets!

Holly’s Inbox fits into the best chick-lit tradition: light chick-lit fare that features an endearing heroine. Reading it did not lead me to ponder the meaning of life or feel terribly sad for the heroine, but rather it left me thoroughly entertained (and wanting more!). The only minor caveat I have is that it is written in British English. This is entirely appropriate, of course, but as an American reader a few of the terms sounded “different” or were unfamiliar to me. Overall, I highly recommend Holly’s Inbox!

Holly’s Inbox: Scandal in the City is the high tea of chick-lit fare: sweet, satisfying, and leaves one craving for seconds!



Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca (August 1, 2010), 544 pages.
Review copy provided courtesy of the publisher.

The War Lovers Giveaway (ends 9/6 )

Publisher's Summary. On February 15th, 1898, the American ship USS Maine mysteriously exploded in the Havana Harbor. News of the blast quickly reached U.S. shores, where it was met by some not with alarm but great enthusiasm. A powerful group of war lovers agitated that the United States exert its muscle across the seas. Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge were influential politicians dismayed by the "closing" of the Western frontier. William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal falsely heralded that Spain's "secret infernal machine" had destroyed the battleship as Hearst himself saw great potential in whipping Americans into a frenzy.

Giveaway Rules. Today I am giving away THREE copies of this fascinating audiobook.

Entry: Comment with your email address in the body of the comment (you can list it as mary123 (at) yahoo(dot)com). If you do not list your email address your entry will not count.

Extra Entries: Sign up to follow my blog (or let me know that you are a current follower); follow me on twitter (DCMetroreader) and on Facebook (Metroreader). NOTE: These extra entries MUST be left in a separate comment or will not count.


The giveaway is open to Canadian and US residents only.
You must be 18 years of age or older.
NO P.O. Boxes for the winner’s mailing address.

Giveaway ends Monday September 6th. Good Luck!

Small Favor Requested

I have never done this before, but if you have a Facebook account I'd really appreciate if you could vote/click for my dog Maggie's picture here. It is a daily vote (based on 24 hours from your last vote) thru 8/29, but even a one time vote could really help. Maggie is currently the number 4 dog in the contest with results determined solely by votes.

Thanks so much!

Mailbox Monday -- August 16th

The reason why I love Mondays -- Mailbox Monday hosted this month by Chick Loves Lit. Below are the following advance review copies that I received this week:

1) Hollywood Savage by Kristin McCloy. Publisher's Summary. Meet me at five," the voice said on the answering machine. Four ordinary words yet, when heard by the wrong person, enough to change the course of a marriage. Marooned in Hollywood while writing a screenplay based on his latest bestselling novel, Miles King records in his journals his escalating conviction that his glamorous wife, a New York-based journalist named Maggie, is having an affair with Miles's favorite student.

Amidst the sun-buffed egos and the longing for connection and fame he encounters at every cocktail party and no-name bar in Hollywood, Miles finds unexpected comfort in an affair of his own with Lucy, a young mother whose open, eager mind sparks an irresistible passion in him. A potent brew of lust, guilt, anger, and betrayal, Miles's journals reveal his constantly shifting emotional state and the perils he must navigate as his fantasies become increasingly hard to distinguish from reality.
In Hollywood Savage, acclaimed novelist Kristin McCloy probes one modern man's psychological depths with stunning accuracy, and illuminates the ways men and women try desperately to reveal themselves to one another, while still always keeping a part of their hearts a secret.

2) The Art of Devotion by Samantha Bruce-Benjamin. Publisher's Summary. n the tradition of bestselling authors Ian McEwan and Anne Enright, Samantha Bruce-Benjamin's brilliant and timeless debut unveils the dark side of human nature as four women share the poignant tale of love, obsession, and ultimate betrayal that binds them forever.
Have we all not wished to keep forever the one person we love the most?
The secluded beaches of a sun-drenched Mediterranean island are the perfect playground for young Sebastian and Adora. Emotionally adrift from their mother, Adora shelters her sensitive older brother from the cruelties of the world. Sophie does not question her children's intense need for one another until it's too late. Her beloved son's affections belong to Adora, and when he drowns in the sea, she has no one else to blame.

Still heartbroken years later, Adora fills her emptiness with Genevieve, the precocious young daughter of her husband's business associate and his jealous wife, Miranda. Thrilled to be invited into the beautiful and enigmatic Adora's world, the child idolizes her during their summers together. Yet, as the years progress, Genevieve begins to suspect their charmed existence is nothing more than a carefully crafted illusion. Soon, she too is ensnared in a web of lies.
Stunningly told in the tragic voices of four women whose lives are fatefully entangled, The Art of Devotion is evocative and haunting, a story of deceit, jealousy, and the heartbreaking reality of love's true power.

3) Sea Escape by Lynne Griffin. Publisher's Summary. Acclaimed novelist and nationally recognized family expert Lynne Griffin returns with Sea Escape—an emotional, beautifully imagined story inspired by the author's family letters about the ties that bind mothers and daughters.

Laura Martinez is wedged in the middle place, grappling with her busy life as a nurse, wife, and devoted mom to her two young children when her estranged mother, Helen, suffers a devastating stroke. In a desperate attempt to lure her mother into choosing life, Laura goes to Sea Escape, the pristine beach home that Helen took refuge in after the death of her beloved husband, Joseph. There, Laura hunts for the legendary love letters her father wrote to her mother when he served as a reporter for the Associated Press during wartime Vietnam.

Believing the beauty and sway of her father's words will have the power to heal, Laura reads the letters bedside to her mother, a woman who once spoke the language of fabric—of Peony Sky in Jade and Paradise Garden Sage—but who can't or won't speak to her now. As Laura delves deeper into her tangled family history, she becomes increasingly determined to save her mother. As each letter reveals a patchwork detail of her parents' marriage, she discovers a common thread: a secret that mother and daughter unknowingly share.

Weaving back and forth from Laura's story to her mother's, beginning in the idyllic 1950s with Helen's love affair with Joseph through the tumultuous Vietnam War period on to the present, Sea Escape takes a gratifying look at what women face in their everyday lives—the balancing act of raising capable and happy children and being accomplished and steadfast wives while still being gracious and good daughters. It is a story that opens the door to family secrets so gripping, you won't be able to put this book down until each is revealed.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster!

4) Ah-Choo by Jennifer Ackerman. Publisher's Summary. Some colds are like mice, timid and annoying; others like dragons, accompanied by body aches and deep misery. In AH-CHOO!, Jennifer Ackerman explains what, exactly, a cold is, how it works, and whether it's really possible to "fight one off." Scientists call this the Golden Age of the Common Cold because Americans suffer up to a billion colds each year, resulting in 40 million days of missed work and school and 100 million doctor visits. They've also learned over the past decade much more about what cold viruses are, what they do to the human body, and how symptoms can be addressed. In this ode to the odious cold, Ackerman sifts through the chatter about treatments-what works, what doesn't, and what can't hurt. She dispels myths, such as susceptibility to colds reflects a weakened immune system. And she tracks current research, including work at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, a world-renowned center of cold research studies, where the search for a cure continues.

Thanks to to Hachette Book Group!

5) The Health Farm Murders by Merryll Manning. Amazon Product Description. A mystery thriller, set against the spectacular scenic backdrop of an imaginary health farm in the small mountain township of Blackheath in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, west of Sydney, Australia, this is the second suspense novel featuring Sergeant Merryll "Merry" Manning of the Miami Police Department. Sergeant Manning debuted in "Merryll Manning: Trapped on Mystery Island" in 2008. Although the characters are entirely fictitious, the plot itself was adapted from several factual incidents that occurred in Mexico, Chile, Peru and other mountainous areas of South America. The geographical details relating to Blackheath and Govett's Leap are accurate in every detail, although the "atmosphere" attributed to the town is purely imaginary. The health ideas touted in the book, however, are based on the advice of several highly respected nutritionists, including Mary C. Hogle and C.E. Clinkard.

Thanks to the author!

Last Day to Win an Eco-Friendly Lunch Box

Be sure to get your entry in here. Good luck!

Last Day to Win Put on Your Crown

Be sure to get your entry in here. Good Luck!

The Body Shop

Publisher's Summary. As a scrawny college freshman in the mid-1970s, just before Arnold Schwarzenegger became a hero to boys everywhere and Pumping Iron became a cult hit, Paul Solotaroff discovered weights and steroids. In a matter of months, he grew from a dorky beanpole into a hulking behemoth, showing off his rock hard muscles first on the streets of New York City and then alongside his colorful gym-rat friends in strip clubs and in the homes of the gotham elite. It was a swinging time, when "Would you like to dance?" turned into "Your place or mine?" and the guys with the muscles had all the ladies--until their bodies, like Solotaroff''s, completely shut down.

But this isn't the gloom-and-doom addiction one might expect--Solotaroff looks back at even his lowest points with a wicked sense of humor, and he sends up the disco era and its excess with all the kaleidoscopic detail of Boogie Nights or Saturday Night Fever.

Written with candor and sarcasm, THE BODY SHOP is a memoir with all the elements of great fiction and dazzlingly displays Paul Solotaroff's celebrated writing talent.

Review. “I want muscles
All, all over his body
(Make him strong enough from his head down to his toes)
I want muscles
All over him, all over him
I want muscles
All, all over his body
I want muscles
I want all I can get
All over him, all over him
I want muscles, muscles, muscles.”

Muscles written by Michael Jackson and sung by Diana Ross

Paul Solotaroff wanted muscles and lots of them, so he did what any self respecting lifter in the Seventies did: he hit the gym and the juice (steroids). In The Body Shop Solotaroff explains his reckless quest for bulk as follows:

For a good year and a half after I started lifting, I never went two full days without benching and rarely went more than one. I knew nothing about rest periods or tissue synthesis or the dispersal of cellular waste, and I wouldn’t have paid attention if someone had made the point while standing on my chest. Rules were for guys with the time and patience to get big strand by strand, duly marking progress in ten-pound plates and, steady, two-rep gains. Put differently, it was for men who’d gotten laid in adolescence and didn’t have a string of dateless weekends tied around their rears like tin cans. When you’re a twenty-year old male around thousands of girls, none of whom evince even the slightest interest in seeing what you look like with no shirt on, the only anatomy you have patience to study is your own in the weight-room mirror. And for that you’ll make all the time in the world – even if it conflicts with your Physics for Poets class.

Soon Solotaroff’s wish was granted: he no longer looked like the puny Charles Atlas, but the “after” pumped up Atlas. With his new found heft came a gig as a private party male stripper. And with the stripping came the holy trifecta of a young man’s dreams: women, drugs, and money.

The Body Shop follows Solotaroff’s “lost years” stripping and juicing. The memoir works surprisingly well on two levels. First, as a dark comedy of Solotaroff’s life in the mid-seventies as a juiced up Jewish male stripper with literary leanings (the author’s father was a noted editor for literary icons such as Philip Roth and Norman Mailer). Second, the memoir unfolds as a compelling family drama centering on the author’s fitful relationship with his loving, but distant father.

The Body Shop is a well written and comedic book that you will not want to put down!



Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (July 26, 2010), 304 pages.
Advance review copy provided courtesy of the publisher.

Pun Enchanted Evenings Review & Giveaway (ends August 29th )

Publisher's Summary. * 746 wildly original puns on every subject from Arizona to zealous crusaders!

* 14 ant puns certain to start a new fad!

* Bi-lingual puns in English and Spanish, French, Chinese, Latin, Yiddish!

* The best new moron puns since the Fifties!

* You'll laugh out loud -- guaranteed!

* Plus information on the first scientific studies showing the mental superiority of pun-lovers!

Most of the puns in this Book are fine for children. But a couple of dozen of them are slightly to somewhat off-color: Numbers 18, 20, 55, 66, 102, 103, 164, 210, 216, 269, 334, 354, 376, 470, 488, 540, 555, 572, 578, 588, and 627 in particular. Please consider this before buying this Book for children.


Review. Who doesn’t enjoy a great pun? I know I do. Recently, I had the opportunity to read Pun Enchanted Evenings by David R. Yale. My reading environment was perfect: I was in need of a little mental escape given that I was captive airport dweller waiting for a long delayed flight home. Fortunately, Pun Enchanted Evening did not disappoint and provided me with so many laughs that a few of my fellow stranded travelers queried as to what I was reading.

Pun Enchanted Evenings is a slender book that is filled cover to cover with laugh out loud puns. A few of my favorites include: What do you call a sad dog that loves fruit: A melon collie; What would you call a person who automatically give you advice every time your pet barks? Dogmatic; and What do you call it when your most valuable player takes a bathroom break? A champ peein’!

Pun Enchanted Evenings is a fun way to pass a few solitary hours or equally fun to share as a read out loud book.

Giveaway Rules: Today I am pleased to offer two copies of this delightful book for giveaway.

Entry: Comment with your email address in the body of the comment (you can list it as mary123 (at) yahoo(dot)com). If you do not list your email address your entry will not count.

Extra Entries: Sign up to follow my blog (or let me know that you are a current follower); follow me on twitter (DCMetroreader) and on Facebook (Metroreader). NOTE: These extra entries MUST be left in a separate comment or will not count.

The giveaway is open internationally, but only Canadian and US residents winners will receive a paperback copy; International Winners will receive a coupon for a downloadable electronic version.

You must be 18 years of age or older (this book contains material that may not be appropriate for children).

Giveaway ends August 29th . Good Luck!


Publisher: A Healthy Relationship Press (April 5, 2010), 108 pages.
Review copy provided courtesy of the publisher.

Wrong

Publisher's Summary. Our investments are devastated, obesity is epidemic, test scores are in decline, blue-chip companies circle the drain, and popular medications turn out to be ineffective and even dangerous. What happened? Didn't we listen to the scientists, economists and other experts who promised us that if we followed their advice all would be well? Actually, those experts are a big reason we're in this mess. And, according to acclaimed business and science writer David H. Freedman, such expert counsel usually turns out to be wrong--often wildly so. Wrong reveals the dangerously distorted ways experts come up with their advice, and why the most heavily flawed conclusions end up getting the most attention-all the more so in the online era. But there's hope: Wrong spells out the means by which every individual and organization can do a better job of unearthing the crucial bits of right within a vast avalanche of misleading pronouncements.

Review. Do you remember the study from a few years back that claimed that “workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers?” It turns out that the study was the product of corporate sponsorship (Hewlett-Packard); involved an extremely small test pool (eight students) who were subjected to continuous noise and flashing lights while taking a standard IQ test. The author of the study, Dr. Glenn Wilson, later admitted that, “it didn’t prove much of anything . . . .” Yet none of this qualifying information was included in the sensational stories that were published at the time. According to author David H. Freedman, in Wrong, this is just one of too many to count examples of misleading or flat out wrong expert information.

Wrong is a provocative book that challenges conventional beliefs about the value of scientific studies (including random controlled trials) and the expert opinions. Some of the most explosive statements come from noted medical researcher John Ioannidis who opines, “most medical treatment simply isn’t backed up by good, quantitative evidence.” Moreover, Ioannidis claims that these problems are not limited to medicine, but rather opines that “the facts suggest that for many, if not the vast majority, of fields, the majority of published studies are likely to be wrong . . . . [Probably] the vast majority.”

Why do experts get it wrong so often? Freedman convincingly argues that several forces are at play including: flawed evidence and faulty assumptions; “fudging” of results or plain fraud by scientists seeking to advance their professional careers; publication preference for positive and sensational findings; audience preference for experts who provide certain and simplistic advice; and internet shenanigans such as for hire services that bump up the paying client’s study in Google search results. In Wrong Freedman explores these and other pitfalls in thorough detail.

Wrong is a book that repeatedly had me scratching my head in amazement, but I think I am the wiser for having read it. In addition, I will no longer blindly accept the latest study results or expert de jour opinion. However, I don’t claim that I “won’t be fooled again.” Rather I think I will be a bit more skeptical or at least more cautious in the future.

Wrong is a revealing book that challenges many sacred cows, but ultimately succeeds in reminding the reader that caveat emptor reigns even when the advice is served up by an expert.



Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (June 10, 2010), 304 pages.
Advance review copy provided courtesy of the publisher.

Wrong Giveaway (ends August 28th )

Publisher's Summary. Our investments are devastated, obesity is epidemic, test scores are in decline, blue-chip companies circle the drain, and popular medications turn out to be ineffective and even dangerous. What happened? Didn't we listen to the scientists, economists and other experts who promised us that if we followed their advice all would be well? Actually, those experts are a big reason we're in this mess. And, according to acclaimed business and science writer David H. Freedman, such expert counsel usually turns out to be wrong--often wildly so. Wrong reveals the dangerously distorted ways experts come up with their advice, and why the most heavily flawed conclusions end up getting the most attention-all the more so in the online era. But there's hope: Wrong spells out the means by which every individual and organization can do a better job of unearthing the crucial bits of right within a vast avalanche of misleading pronouncements.

Giveaway Rules. Today I am giving away THREE copies of this thought provoking book!

Entry: Comment with your email address in the body of the comment (you can list it as mary123 (at) yahoo(dot)com). If you do not list your email address your entry will not count.

Extra Entry: Sign up to follow my blog (or let me know that you are a current follower). NOTE: This extra entry MUST be left in a separate comment or it will not count.

The giveaway is open to Canadian and US residents only.
You must be 18 years of age or older.
NO P.O. Boxes for the winner’s mailing address.

Giveaway ends August 28th. Good Luck!

Mailbox Monday -- August 9th

The reason why I love Mondays -- Mailbox Monday hosted this month by Chick Loves Lit. Below are the following advance review copies that I received this week:

1) I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee. Publisher's Summary. ritics have called her "sweet, adorable, and vicious." But there is so much more to be said about Samantha Bee. For one, she's Canadian. Whatever that means. And now, she opens up for the very first time about her checkered Canadian past. With charming candor, she admits to her Lennie from Of Mice and Men–style love of baby animals, her teenage crime spree as one-half of a car-thieving couple (Bonnie and Clyde in Bermuda shorts and braces), and the fact that strangers seem compelled to show her their genitals. She also details her intriguing career history, which includes stints working in a frame store, at a penis clinic, and as a Japanese anime character in a touring children's show.

Samantha delves into all these topics and many more in this thoroughly hilarious, unabashedly frank collection of personal essays. Whether detailing the creepiness that ensues when strangers assume that your mom is your lesbian lover, or recalling her girlhood crush on Jesus (who looked like Kris Kristofferson and sang like Kenny Loggins), Samantha turns the spotlight on her own imperfect yet highly entertaining life as relentlessly as she skewers hapless interview subjects on The Daily Show. She shares her unique point of view on a variety of subjects as wide ranging as her deep affinity for old people, to her hatred of hot ham. It's all here, in irresistible prose that will leave you in stitches and eager for more.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster!

2) One Day by David Nicholls. Publisher's Summary. It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself.

Thanks to Random House!

3) Holly's Inbox by Holly Denham. Publisher's Summary. Dear Holly, isn’t it shocking…?

Things are finally going Holly Denham’s way: she’s in love, she’s getting the recognition she deserves at work, and her friends and family have graciously opted to avoid disaster for the moment.

Just when Holly is starting to settle into her new life, scandal erupts and Holly finds herself—and her in box—at the center of a gossip whirlwind that threatens everything she’s worked so hard for.

Written entirely in emails, this follow-up to the UK smash hit Holly’s Inbox will keep you glued to its pages as the scandal running rampant in the city threatens to ruin Holly’s hard-earned and long-awaited happiness.

Thanks to Sourcebooks!

4) Someday by Alice Yi-Li Yeh. Author's Summary. Marie Vanders led a dull existence, involving an apartment in the slums, a cat for a therapist, and a mountain of educational debt. After a long work week, all that she wanted was a quick sugar fix. What she found instead was a self-assured stranger who manages to smooth talk the sharp-tongued singleton into a night away from her "selectively xenophobic" life.

An unexpected accident turns a one night stand into a temporary roommate, and what follows is a series of events that forces Marie to reassess her misanthropic tendencies and her complicated past with the family that abandoned her six years ago. Along the way, she will discover the power of honesty, forgiveness, and the willingness to create her own chance at happiness.

Thanks to the author!

And more winners!

Superduper Congrats to the Winners of The I Hate Cook Book (and my largest entry giveaway to date):

joannelong74
amusedbybooks

Bon Appetite!

And while that giveaway is closed there are still lots of great giveaways open:

The Body Shop by Paul Solotaroff here

Men and Dogs by Katie Crouch here

Put on Your Crown by Queen Latifah here

And an Easy Lunchbox here

Winners!

Congrats to the confirmed winners of The 9th Judgment Giveaway:

parkins14
cheryl_429
Alice Yi-Li Yeh

Giveaway Ending Today

Today is the last day to enter to win a copy of the classic I Hate to Cook Book, be sure to get your entry in here.

Guest Post by author Dora Calott Wang

Is Wall Street Making Life or Death Decisions?
By Dora Calott Wang, M.D.,
Author of The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist's Reflections on Healing in a Changing World

Is your health insurance company traded on Wall Street?

If so, is Wall Street deciding your medical care?

It's hard to recall that for-profit corporations were once kept out of health care -- in fact, for most of the 20th century. During this time, the nation's medical system was built largely by non-profit and charitable organizations, which is why so many hospitals are named for saints. Courts across the country ruled that for corporations to profit from medical care was simply "against sound public policy." In the early 1980's, however, when the financial and airline industries were deregulated, a similar process occurred for American medicine. For-profit corporations became newly encouraged to take leadership of health care. Deregulating health care into the free market was intended to drive down costs and to improve care. After all, medical care in 1980 consumed a whopping 9.1 percent of the nation's GDP.

Never mind that after 30 years in the free market, health care costs have doubled to consume 18 percent of the GDP (with a third of these precious dollars wasted on bureaucracy). Never mind that health care has gotten increasingly inaccessible to the uninsured and even the insured, or that American health care has become an international poster child for reform.

The real issue is that modern medical care has simply, finally, gotten so effective. Today, even cancer and AIDs are no longer death sentences, and if organs fail, you try to get a new one. But prior to the discovery of antibiotics and vaccines in the 1930's, leeches were routinely applied, and medicine was steeped in superstition. Between 1918 and 1920, three percent of the world's population was wiped out -- by the flu.

The fair and effective distribution of life-sustaining resources like food, water and shelter, is the very story of civilization. Yet now, thanks to centuries upon centuries of civilization and scientific inquiry, we have at last, a new life-sustaining resource -- modern medical care, which is less than 80 years old.

How should this powerful new resource be distributed? I believe that medical care shouldn't be considered an ordinary product, like athletic shoes or flat screen TV's. Rather, it is quickly becoming essential, like water. Yet there will be no easy answers when it comes medical care, in this brave new world in which DNA is already being tweaked to grow completely new organs. We are embarking on a new, complex and long chapter of history.

I can't help but think that health care reform isn't over, and wasn't concluded with the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March.

I believe that health care reform will be our entire future.

In the meantime, for now, how is modern medical care, a new Prometheus' fire, being distributed and decided in the United States?

Physicians and patients sit face to face and discuss medical decisions -- about whether a life-sustaining cardiac bypass surgery is warranted, or whether a new liver should be gotten. But ultimately, the purse strings on medical care are held by health insurance companies.

The new health reform laws will obligate insurance companies to provide "coverage" even when patients become sick or if they have a "pre-existing condition" or what I will call "illness". The PPACA has a provision on "administrative simplification" scheduled to take effect in 2014, which aims to streamline the process of doctors and health care providers asking for approvals from health insurance companies before treatments are rendered.

But even after the new laws are implemented, health insurance companies, many of them for-profit corporations traded on Wall Street, will continue to hold the purse strings on medical care.

Our recent health reform efforts are landmark progress in the right direction.

However, in the last thirty years, the values of Wall Street have so infiltrated the values of American society that seemingly all aspects of life are impacted, even medical care of the human body and mind, even the everyday life or death decisions that happen in doctor offices and hospital rooms.


© 2010 Dora Calott Wang, M.D., author of The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist's Reflections on Healing in a Changing World

Author Bio
Dora Calott Wang, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. A graduate of the Yale School of Medicine and the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, she received her M.A. in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been the recipient of a writer's residency from the Lannan Foundation. Her memoir, The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist's Reflections on Healing in a Changing World was published by Riverhead Books, The Penguin Group.
For more information please visit www.doracalottwang.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.

Guest Post by author Dorothy Howell

Hollywood Loves a Great Handbag

By Dorothy Howell,
Author of Shoulder Bags and Shootings: A Haley Randolph Mystery

Fashion is a major player in Hollywood. Wardrobe departments spend tireless hours perfecting the right "look" for their actors. Celebrity stylists live or die by the image they craft for their clients. Magazines and television shows devote themselves to photos and descriptions of celebrity clothing and accessories.

From the style and elegance of fashion icons such as Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn during Hollywood's Golden Era, to pics of celebs like Jennifer Aniston and Reece Witherspoon hitting the trendy L.A. shops, the public is fascinated by what they're wearing.

Regardless of current styles, situations or occasions, no actress or fashion icon would be caught in public without one indispensable fashion accessory -- her handbag.

This year's Oscar night saw pastels and bright colors, along with ruffles and trains, outside the Kodak Theater; most accompanied by a gorgeous clutch. The different shapes and sizes decorated with jewels glistening under the lights, made it the accessory to watch.

Anna Kendrick, a first-time nominee, carried a jeweled Judith Leiber clutch. Elizabeth Banks accessorized her Verace gown with a gray snakeskin and silver crystal clutch from Salvatore Ferragamo. Diva Demi Moore, ruled the red carpet with a gold leather envelope clutch, while Kate Winslet rocked an Yves Saint-Laurent silver satin bag. These Hollywood fashionistas proved nothing completes a red-carpet look like a handbag.

Yet for all their glamour and prestige, today's top handbag designers had decidedly unfashionable beginnings. Louis Vuitton made travel trunks in the 1800s, while Hermés crafted horse harnesses for Europe's aristocracy. Prada, Fendi, and Gucci were known for their leather baggage.

These houses made the jump to light speed, fashion wise, by looking into the future and adapting to changing times, and today they give us some of the most sought-after handbags in the world.

Purses aren't just another glitz and glamour accessory. Like all Hollywood beauties, the handbag is expected to work. Whether in a starring or a supporting role, the handbag is often in the spotlight.

Sarah Jessica Parker's character Carrie Bradshaw, on the Sex and the City television show, received a Judith Leiber handbag from Big. The cupcake purse by this famed designer made an appearance in the SATC movie. Samantha Jones, played by Kim Cattrall, ran afoul of Lucy Liu over a long awaited Birkin bag.

Ruth Buzzi turned her purse into a weapon and fought off her hapless, would-be attacker on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. A decades-old skit so funny it can still be viewed on YouTube.

Who can forget Jamie Farr's portrayal of Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger and his desperate attempt to get discharged from the Army by dressing in drag on the long running television show M*A*S*H? He went about his duties wearing a dress, hat, gloves, high heels and, of course, carrying a handbag.

The style, glitz and glam of a Hollywood-worthy purse are available to the everyday fashionista. Retail, discount, and online stores abound. Be the star of your own show with the handbag of your dreams.


© 2010 Dorothy Howell, author of Shoulder Bags and Shootings: A Haley Randolph Mystery

Author Bio
Dorothy Howell, author of Shoulder Bags and Shootings: A Haley Randolph Mystery, was inspired to write Handbags and Homicide by her crazed obsession with designer purses. She lives in Southern California, where there is, thankfully, no rehab program for handbag addiction, and is hard at work on her next Haley Randolph mystery. Visit her Website at www.DorothyHowellNovels.com.

Follow the author on Facebook.

Winners!

Congrats to the winners of my Trapped on Mystery Island Giveaway:

janezfan
cenya2

and to The Impostor's Daughter Giveaway:
smartin_90
bookventuresbookclub
pbclark
catherine.verdier
terrymac1a

The Body Shop Giveaway (ends August 21st )

Publisher's Summary. As a scrawny college freshman in the mid-1970s, just before Arnold Schwarzenegger became a hero to boys everywhere and Pumping Iron became a cult hit, Paul Solotaroff discovered weights and steroids. In a matter of months, he grew from a dorky beanpole into a hulking behemoth, showing off his rock hard muscles first on the streets of New York City and then alongside his colorful gym-rat friends in strip clubs and in the homes of the gotham elite. It was a swinging time, when "Would you like to dance?" turned into "Your place or mine?" and the guys with the muscles had all the ladies--until their bodies, like Solotaroff''s, completely shut down.

But this isn't the gloom-and-doom addiction one might expect--Solotaroff looks back at even his lowest points with a wicked sense of humor, and he sends up the disco era and its excess with all the kaleidoscopic detail of Boogie Nights or Saturday Night Fever.

Written with candor and sarcasm, THE BODY SHOP is a memoir with all the elements of great fiction and dazzlingly displays Paul Solotaroff's celebrated writing talent.

Giveaway Rules. Today I am giving away THREE copies of this provocative book.

Entry: Comment with your email address in the body of the comment (you can list it as mary123 (at) yahoo(dot)com). If you do not list your email address your entry will not count.

Extra Entry: Sign up to follow my blog (or let me know that you are a current follower). NOTE: This extra entry MUST be left in a separate comment or it will not count.

The giveaway is open to Canadian and US residents only.
You must be 18 years of age or older.
NO P.O. Boxes for the winner’s mailing address.

Giveaway ends August 21st. Good Luck!

Mailbox Monday -- August 2nd

The reason why I love Mondays -- Mailbox Monday hosted this month by Chick Loves Lit. Below are the following advance review copies that I received this week:

1) The Kitchen Shrink by Dora Calot Wong, M.D. Amazon Product Description. he personal story of how a psychiatrist confronts the profound changes sweeping the medical establishment as they reshape her life and career.

In the past two decades, a seismic shift has occurred within the walls of our nation's hospitals and doctor's offices. The medical profession- once considered a sacred, cherished vocation-has devolved into a business motivated by a desire for profits. Even psychiatry, once the mainstay of the human interaction between doctor and patient, has fallen victim to rising costs and dictates by insurance sources.

How has medicine strayed so far from its roots? In The Kitchen Shrink, psychiatrist and lecturer Dora Calott Wang delves into what happened.

Through the prism of her own story, Wang elucidates key events in her professional life-the declining state of hospitals and clinics, the advent of managed care, and the rise of profits at the ex­pense of patient care-that highlight the medical profession's decline. Along the way we meet some of her patients, whose plights reflect the profession's growing indifference to the human lives at risk. There's Selena, whose grief over her mother's death and lack of family support make it difficult for her to take the medicine that keeps her body from rejecting her new liver, and Leonard, a schizophrenic with no health insurance who develops peritonitis and falls into a coma for three months. Each new story brings additional compromises as the medical landscape shifts under Wang's feet. She struggles with depression and exhaustion, witnesses the loss of top doctors who leave in frustration, and attempts to find a balance between work and home as it becomes ever clearer that she cannot untangle the uncertain future of her patients from her own.

Part personal story and part rallying cry, The Kitchen Shrink is an unflinchingly honest, passionate, and humane inside look at the unsettling realities of free-market medicine in today's America.

2) Shoulder Bags and Shootings by Dorothy Howell. Publisher's Summary. Haley Randolph just spent two weeks in Europe with her boyfriend Ty Cameron, owner of Holt's Department Store. Life would be perfect if she could just get her hands on the new Sinful handbag--and if she could discover how her nemesis Tiffany Markham ended up dead in her trunk.

Thanks to FSB Associates!

3) Blue Nude by Elizabeth Rosner. Publisher's Summary. Once a prominent painter, Danzig now shares his wisdom and technique with students at San Francisco's Art Institute—yet his own canvases remain empty. When he meets Israeli-born Merav, the beautiful new model for his class, he senses she may reignite his artistic passion. Merav moved to California to escape the danger and violence of the Middle East, yet she cannot outrun her fears about the past. As the characters challenge one another, Rosner lyrically uncovers their disparate upbringings, their creative awakenings, and their similarly painful, often catastrophic, love lives to propel them toward reconciliation, redemption, and ultimately revival.

4) Diamond Ruby by Joseph Wallace. Publisher's Summary. Seventeen-year-old Ruby Thomas, newly responsible for her two young nieces after a devastating tragedy, is determined to keep her family safe in the vast, swirling world of 1920s New York City. She's got street smarts, boundless determination, and one unusual skill: the ability to throw a ball as hard as the greatest pitchers in a baseball-mad city.

From Coney Island sideshows to the brand-new Yankee Stadium, Diamond Ruby chronicles the extraordinary life and times of a girl who rises from utter poverty to the kind of renown only the Roaring Twenties can bestow. But her fame comes with a price, and Ruby must escape a deadly web of conspiracy and threats from Prohibition rumrunners, the Ku Klux Klan, and the gangster underworld.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster!

5) What She Kept by Linda Bradshaw. Amazon Product Description. Deanne Cross endured a hard childhood in an unhappy Appalachian home, but she doesn't want anyone to feel sorry for her. As her life unfolds from rural Alabama to working class Chicago, she is determined to create a different kind of life for herself, her family, her husband, and her children. Through early loss to middle-aged stability, she refuses to acknowledge the price of self-will. Deanne is a woman displaced, flawed and difficult, deeply connected to her past even as she tries to ignore it.

Thanks to the author!

6) Double Trouble by Jim Lacey. Author's Summary. The disappearance of a controversial history professor at Wyndham State College from his sailboat on the Connecticut shore initiates a web of intrigue that brings an attractive cast of characters to New York City and Washington, D.C. They include savvy and hapless academics, a popular administrator who is not what he claims to be, a sharp and attractive UConn law student, a middle school teacher with a shadowy past, a super mom, and two precocious kids. What begins as an investigation of a local mystery by would-be sleuths leads to the discovery of the Knights of Malta’s involvement in terrorism and the shenanigans of the state department in Latin America during the Reagan administration. The book is cheerful, romantic at times, and full of surprises. Readers who like upbeat conclusions will not be disappointed.


Thanks to the author!

Last day to for the James Patterson Giveaway

Today is the last day to enter top win a copy of this terrific Patterson thriller. Get your entry in here.