Mailbox Monday October 3

It's Monday again! Time for another Mailbox Monday post. Mailbox Monday is the creation of Marcia from Mailbox Monday. The meme is on tour and this month's host is Serena from Savvy Verse & Wit. Thank you Serena for hosting this month!

Can you believe it is October! This year has flown by! This week's mailbox is mostly purchases and one unsolicited audiobook. I purchased a few books that I have been dying for after reading reviews for them on other blogs! Some I purchased used. I also ran into Barnes and Noble because I was in the area and hadn't been there in a very long time. I was surprised at how empty the store was. It used to be a hopping joint. It is the only book store in our area for miles and miles now. It's sad to see it void of shoppers. They did have some clearance tables out so I perused them and found one cookbook and I also picked up a magazine from the U.K. that I have been looking for. The audiobook I received may not be of my taste. I am still thinking about it.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Audio CD
Publisher: Macmillan Audio; Unabridged edition (October 11, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1427213089
ISBN-13: 978-1427213082

Summary

It’s the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.

As Madeleine tries to understand why “it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France,” real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead—charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy—suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old “friend” Mitchell Grammaticus—who’s been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange—resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.

Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology Laboratory on Cape Cod, but can’t escape the secret responsible for Leonard’s seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

Received courtesy of Macmillan Audio

Wildflower Hill by Kimberly Freeman
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
Linger by Maggie Stiefvater
Cross Currents by John Shors
The Accidental Bestseller by Wendy Wax
The Midwife's Confession by Diane Chamberlain

Mollie Makes

This is the cutest craft magazine ever! However be sure to look at the price before you hit the checkout should you decide to buy it! It was $11.99! However, it did come with the neatest little MP3 player case kit. There are some cool patterns inside the magazine along with some very cool retro decorating ideas. I am not sure if I will purchase this magazine again but I ma enjoying this copy.

The Soup Bible

I picked this up on the clearance table at B&N. It was $4.98! We are big soup eaters in our home in the winter, so this will be a handy book to have. I have found quite a few recipes in it to try once the cold weather hits. Spring Pea & Mint Soup and Cheesy Spinach Soup are just two that I hope to try. This book will get a lot of use!

So that is what came into my home last week. I think it is time for a book buying ban for me. I do have one coming in this week. I needed a creepy read for October. Not my usual fare of book but I have been feeling like I need one spooky read for the month. It won't be too scarey! I am a huge chicken!

What wonderful reads made their way into your home?