Mailbox Monday-- December 7th!

Thanks to host Marcia at The Printed Page I'm participating in the Mailbox Monday round up. This week I received the following advance review copies:

1) Strictly Sundays by Joe Fitzpatrick: Product Description. Strictly Sundays is a special occasion cookbook designed for and by a family chef. Joe Fitzpatrick has been working wonders in the kitchen and on the grill for decades – now you can too. Serve real food that fills the belly, satisfies the soul and wins the day. Any day. Not just Sunday.

Thanks to the author.

2) You're Not Going Crazy You're Just Waking Up! by Dr. Michael Mirdad. Amazon Product Description.
This book explains why the challenges in your life (and in your heart) may make you feel as though you are going crazy. The Five Stages of the Soul Transformation Process guides you through such challenges and leads you to the light at the end of the tunnel; wherein you gain a new perspective of your life, yourself, and your purpose. The soul transformation process includes: dismantling, emptiness, disorientation, re-building, and a new life. This process assists you in rising to new levels of spiritual mastery where you become an active participant in re-building a new life, a life that resonates with your highest good. Forward written by Gary Renard, author of, The Disappearance of the Universe.

Thanks to the Publisher.

3) The Hollow by Jessica Verday. Amazon Product Description. When Abbey's best friend, Kristen, vanishes at the bridge near Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, everyone else is all too quick to accept that Kristen is dead?and rumors fly that her death was no accident. Abbey goes through the motions of mourning her best friend, but privately, she refuses to believe that Kristen is really gone. Then she meets Caspian, the gorgeous and mysterious boy who shows up out of nowhere at Kristen's funeral, and keeps reappearing in Abbey's life. Caspian clearly has secrets of his own, but he's the only person who makes Abbey feel normal again...but also special.

Just when Abbey starts to feel that she might survive all this, she learns a secret that makes her question everything she thought she knew about her best friend. How could Kristen have kept silent about so much? And could this secret have led to her death? As Abbey struggles to understand Kristen's betrayal, she uncovers a frightening truth that nearly unravels her—one that will challenge her emerging love for Caspian, as well as her own sanity.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster.

4) Seven by Jacqueline Leo. Publisher's Summary. What is it about the number seven that has such a hold on us? Why are there seven deadly sins? Seven days of the week? Seven wonders of the world, seven colors of the spectrum, seven ages of man, and seven sister colleges? Why can we hold seven numbers or words in our working memory--but no more? Author Jackie Leo explores everything about this mystical, magical, useful, and fun number in her new book.

SEVEN REASONS YOU NEED THIS BOOK

1. SEVEN is a tool to improve the quality of your life. It is a way to define time, synthesize ideas, and keep your mind performing at top speed in an era of distractions.

2. SEVEN is culturally significant. It pops up everywhere, structuring our world in ways so fundamental, we notice them only when we pause to look. Across the ages and across cultures, the number has acquired a huge scientific, psychological, and religious significance.

3. SEVEN is intriguing. Why, out of hundreds of recipes in a cookbook, do people return to the same seven, over and over? Why, when asked to choose a number between one and ten, does such a large majority of people choose seven? Why does it take seven rounds of shuffling to obtain a fully mixed deck of cards?

4. SEVEN is influential. You'll learn how the number seven shapes our thinking, our choices, and even our relationships.

5. SEVEN is practical. Throughout this book are Top Seven lists covering the best ways to get someone's attention, to build your personal brand, and to put yourself in the path of prosperity and good luck.

6. SEVEN is fun. You'll encounter surprising facts, intriguing puzzles, and hilarious anecdotes.

7. SEVEN is wise. You'll hear stories about the meaning of seven from Mehmet Oz, Sally Quinn, Liz Smith, Christina Ricci, and many others.
Artfully designed and full of enough insights to keep you engaged in conversation at the water cooler for years, SEVEN will provoke, enlighten, and amuse.

Thanks to Hachette Book Group.

The Smart One and the Pretty One Winners

The winners for The Smart One and the Pretty One are: Sheila, Wan-ling, Wanda, Erin, and Janet.


Congrats to the winners!

Children of Dust

Author's Biography. Ali Eteraz is a writer and free-lance journalist. Born into a nomadic family in Lahore, Pakistan, he was raised in the Middle East, Pakistan and the Caribbean, and has lived in ten American states. He studied philosophy in college, where he wrote his honors thesis on Nietzsche. Later he attended law school where he earned a fellowship in public service and interned on human rights cases. After a short stint working in the area of corporate litigation he switched to a writing career. He is currently a contributor to The Guardian, True/Slant, and Dawn, Pakistan’s largest and oldest English language daily. His articles have appeared in Dissent, Foreign Policy, Parabola, Open Democracy and Alternet, among others, and have been linked by hundreds of blogs, including NYTimes, The Atlantic and Time Magazine.

Ali is the author of the prose work Children of Dust, which is scheduled to be released on October 13 2009 by Harper One, an imprint of Harper Collins. Upon reading an early excerpt from the book, the late philosopher and literary critic, Richard Rorty, stated he was “particularly impressed” by the “powerfully written” work.

Review. Before Ali Eteraz aka Amir ur Islam aka Abu Bakr Ramaq aka Amir aka Abir ul Islam was born his father promised God that he would be a great leader and a servant of Islam. Children of Dust by Ali Eteraz is a memoir of the author’s coming to terms with that accord or mannat.

The Table of Contents reads like a map of Eteraz’s geographical and personal journey. In Book One: The Promised -- Abir ul Islam (Perfume of Islam) he is a child living in Pakistan attending a religious school (madrassa) to memorize the Quran. In Book Two – The American – Amir, he is a teen living in the Bible Belt trying to blend in with his new American peers. In Book Three – The Fundamentalist – Abu Bakr Ramaq (Spark of Light) he is attending college in Manhattan and embraces Islamic fundamentalism. Book Three follows his disappointing return to Pakistan where his old friends reject him as “too American.” In Book Four – The Post Modern – Amir ul Islam he inwardly adopts anti-Islamic ideas at his new university while outwardly feigning Islamic piety. The final book, Book Five details the author’s transformation to Ali Eteraz (Noble Protest) in which he becomes an activist against the violence committed in the name of Islam.

Eteraz is a gifted writer covering a wide swath of emotions in Children of Dust. When describing an unexpected emotional awakening at party in Dubai with Pakistani laborers, Eteraz lyrically writes:

It [a song] melted away my skin and sinew and made me a part of the men around me. These men who were raised from dust, lived in dust, and would eventually rest in dust. I felt one with them. I was not alone. We were many. We were all children of dust.

At other turns, Eteraz hones a light comedic touch such as this passage:

A Muslim leader [he was president of his university’s Muslim Students Association] . . . had to be what others thought a perfect Muslim should be. The trouble, of course, was that I was far removed from piety . . . and therefore the only solutions were to genuinely achieve piety or fake.

As a true postmodernist I opted for the latter and called it art . . . .

The only disappointment came at the end of the book when Eteraz leaves loose ends concerning his family.

Overall, Children of Dust is a riveting story of one man’s quest to fulfill his pre-birth covenant.


Publisher: HarperOne; 1st edition (October 13, 2009), 352 pages
Review Copy Provided Courtesy of the publisher and FSB Associates.

How to be Famous

Publisher's Summary. From braving the wilds of Los Angeles to the Costa Rican jungle, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have learned a thing or two about reality...television, that is. But while dominating the airwaves and tabloid covers every week may look like all fun and mind games, Speidi is here to tell you: becoming wildly famous requires hard work and a no-fail blueprint for success. Now, for the first time ever, Heidi and Spencer invite you behind the scenes as they reveal the ten-step plan that took them from nobodies to notorious! You will:

* Learn how to say I hate you without opening your mouth--Heidi's exclusive tutorial
* Increase your capacity for evil with Spencer's "Villain-o-meter"
* Discovery why getting and talking about plastic surgery is a must
* Unlock the secrets of celebrity couple math (e.g. Speidi > Heidi + Spencer)
* Mesmerize the media with outrageous behavior
* Bow down to the power of the paparazzi

...and much, much more!

With Heidi and Spencer as your personal coaches, you, too, can transform yourself into a red-carpet-ready superstar!

Review. How to be Famous by Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt is a tongue-in-cheek guide for would be tabloid stars. As the authors gush, “whether you love us, hate us, or love to hate us, there is a recipe for infiltrating Hollywood, and we’ve got it.”

Montag and Pratt caution, “if you fail to churn out the drama that got people interested in the first place, you’re doomed to never see your sixteenth minute [of fame].” Thankfully, How to be Famous reveals how to keep churning out the drama for future Enquirer stories. With illustrative chapter teachings on: Your Point of Entry; Spencer’s Guide to Playing the Villain; Heidi’s Guide to Playing the Bombshell; Pretty on the Outside; The Paps are Your Friends; Tell Your Story; Couple Power; Building Your Brand; Getting Work Done is Your Job; and Famously Ever After, you too can be tabloid fodder.

How to Be Famous is a quick,glossy, satiric read (I read it from start to finish on a two hour plane flight and had time to spare) for the You Tube generation.



Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (November 16, 2009), 144 pages
Advance Review Copy Provided Courtesy of the Publisher.

How to be Famous Giveaway (ends 12/18)

Publisher's Summary. From braving the wilds of Los Angeles to the Costa Rican jungle, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have learned a thing or two about reality...television, that is. But while dominating the airwaves and tabloid covers every week may look like all fun and mind games, Speidi is here to tell you: becoming wildly famous requires hard work and a no-fail blueprint for success. Now, for the first time ever, Heidi and Spencer invite you behind the scenes as they reveal the ten-step plan that took them from nobodies to notorious! You will:

* Learn how to say I hate you without opening your mouth--Heidi's exclusive tutorial
* Increase your capacity for evil with Spencer's "Villain-o-meter"
* Discovery why getting and talking about plastic surgery is a must
* Unlock the secrets of celebrity couple math (e.g. Speidi > Heidi + Spencer)
* Mesmerize the media with outrageous behavior
* Bow down to the power of the paparazzi

...and much, much more!

With Heidi and Spencer as your personal coaches, you, too, can transform yourself into a red-carpet-ready superstar!

Giveaway Rules. Today I am giving away FIVE copies of this fun 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.

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 December 18th. Good Luck!

Cheating Death

Publisher's Summary. An unborn baby with a fatal heart defect . . . a skier submerged for an hour in a frozen Norwegian lake . . . a comatose brain surgery patient whom doctors have declared a "vegetable." Twenty years ago all of them would have been given up for dead, with no realistic hope for survival. But today, thanks to incredible new medical advances, each of these individuals is alive and well . . .Cheating Death.

In this riveting book, Dr. Sanjay Gupta-neurosurgeon, chief medical correspondent for CNN, and bestselling author-chronicles the almost unbelievable science that has made these seemingly miraculous recoveries possible. A bold new breed of doctors has achieved amazing rescues by refusing to accept that any life is irretrievably lost. Extended cardiac arrest, "brain death," not breathing for over an hour-all these conditions used to be considered inevitably fatal, but they no longer are. Today, revolutionary advances are blurring the traditional line between life and death in fascinating ways.

Drawing on real-life stories and using his unprecedented access to the latest medical research, Dr. Gupta dramatically presents exciting accounts of how pioneering physicians and researchers are altering our understanding of how the human body functions when it comes to survival-and why more and more patients who once would have died are now alive. From experiments with therapeutic hypothermia to save comatose stroke or heart attack victims to lifesaving operations in utero to the study of animal hibernation to help wounded soldiers on far-off battlefields, these remarkable case histories transform and enrich all our assumptions about the true nature of death and life.

Review. Cheating Death by Sanjay Gupta, M.D. would be considered science fiction if the stories were not true. The dramatic vignettes include: a skier submerged in icy waters for over an hour without a pulse; a man with an invariably lethal brain tumor who lives to celebrate the thirteenth anniversary of his diagnosis; and a “hopeless” neurological patient who returns to his medical practice. These “medical miracles” occurred in large part due to the interruption of the death domino chain. As Gupta explains,

Death is not a single event, but a process that may be interrupted, even reversed. And . . . at any point during this process, the course of what seems inevitable can be changed. That is precisely what . . . the book [is about]: the possibility of cheating death.

In addition, to the compelling personal survival stories, Gupta also highlights exciting new medical research that may save scores of lives in the future. The chapter on suspended animation (a medically induced “safe cocoon”) is particularly exciting! Suspended animation involves turning the heart off for an extended period of time and later restarting it. As one researcher reflects, “the whole of emergency medicine is a time dependent thing . . . . [And] things that can’t be fixed now, we could fix with more time. There’s no question.”

Cheating Death is an entertaining and eye opening read into the medical advances of today and a glimpse into the promise of tomorrow.





Publisher: Wellness Central, Hachette Book Group (Oct. 12, 2009), 282 pages.
Review Copy Provided Courtesy of the Publisher.

Cheating Death Giveaway (ends 12/18)

Publisher's Summary. An unborn baby with a fatal heart defect . . . a skier submerged for an hour in a frozen Norwegian lake . . . a comatose brain surgery patient whom doctors have declared a "vegetable."
Twenty years ago all of them would have been given up for dead, with no realistic hope for survival. But today, thanks to incredible new medical advances, each of these individuals is alive and well . . .Cheating Death.
In this riveting book, Dr. Sanjay Gupta-neurosurgeon, chief medical correspondent for CNN, and bestselling author-chronicles the almost unbelievable science that has made these seemingly miraculous recoveries possible. A bold new breed of doctors has achieved amazing rescues by refusing to accept that any life is irretrievably lost. Extended cardiac arrest, "brain death," not breathing for over an hour-all these conditions used to be considered inevitably fatal, but they no longer are. Today, revolutionary advances are blurring the traditional line between life and death in fascinating ways.

Drawing on real-life stories and using his unprecedented access to the latest medical research, Dr. Gupta dramatically presents exciting accounts of how pioneering physicians and researchers are altering our understanding of how the human body functions when it comes to survival-and why more and more patients who once would have died are now alive. From experiments with therapeutic hypothermia to save comatose stroke or heart attack victims to lifesaving operations in utero to the study of animal hibernation to help wounded soldiers on far-off battlefields, these remarkable case histories transform and enrich all our assumptions about the true nature of death and life.

Giveaway Rules: Today I am giving away FIVE copies of this fabulous book.

First 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 December 18th Good Luck!