Mailbox Monday & GIVEAWAY

Thanks for joining me for the first Mailbox Monday of 2013! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Lori at Lori's Reading Corner is hosting in January.  Please visit her fun blog for giveaways, reviews, and lots more.

I got one book last week, and it looks really great -- a historic, literary mystery that is the first of what could be a terrific new series.  Thanks go to book publicist Mary Bisbee-Beek for my copy, and copies for a giveaway!



On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery by Sue Hallgarth. Available on amazon or, better yet, ask your local bookstore to order it!

THE BOOK

 
Publisher's description:

The year is 1929 and Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Willa Cather and her partner Edith Lewis are summering on Grand Manan, an island in the Bay of Fundy. In their cottage's sparsely-furnished attic room, Cather is at work writing Shadows on the Rock, her tenth novel. Relaxing after a hectic winter of working at a New York City ad agency, J. Walter Thompson, Edith is painting watercolors from the cliffs two hundred feet above the rising tides of Whale Cove. Out of the corner of her eye, Edith sees a body plunge from the edge of a cliff to the rocks below...

Solving the mystery, first-time novelist Sue Hallgarth's intimate view of village politics and the goings-on of two women s communities long lost to history is also a suspenseful and surprising crime novel. Hallgarth draws the reader into a unique retreat, stimulating conversations about literature and art, and an inside glimpse of the lives of a great American novelist and her talented life partner.

THE GIVEAWAY

This is a "leap-frog" giveaway.  This means that I have three (3!) copies to giveaway to Rose City Reader readers, and each winner will get to host another giveaway for an additional copy.

The contest is for readers in the USA and Canada and is open until Monday, January 14, 2013. There are five ways to enter and each one is worth a chance to win.  To enter, do any or all of the following, but you must leave a comment for each one:

1. Leave a comment on this post. You must include a way to contact you (email or website address in your comment or available in your profile). If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner. (1 entry)

2. Blog about this giveaway. Posting the giveaway on your sidebar is also acceptable. Leave a separate comment with a link to your post. (1 entry)

3. Subscribe to my rss feed, follow me on blogger, or subscribe via email (or tell me if you already are a subscriber or follower). Leave a separate comment for this. (1 entry)

4. Tweet this post on Twitter. Leave me a separate comment with your twitter user name. (1 entry)

5. Post this on a social network. Put it on facebook, post it on Google+, pin it on Pinterest, Stumble it, digg it, technorati fave it, or otherwise put it out there in the social network. Leave a separate comment with a link or explaination. (1 entry)

There are a lot of ways to enter (maximum of five entries), but you must LEAVE A SEPARATE COMMENT for each one or they will not count. I will use random.org to pick the winners from the comments.

This contest is open to entries from the U.S. and Canada only. The deadline for entry is 9:00 PM, Pacific Time, on Monday, January 14, 2013. I will draw and post the winner's name in my Teaser Tuesday post for January 15, 2013.

2013 European Reading Challenge: Review Page

2013 European Reading Challenge

January 1, 2013 to January 31, 2014

THIS IS THE PAGE TO LIST YOUR REVIEWS.

IF YOU HAVE FINISHED, WRAP UP POSTS GO HERE.

TO SIGN UP, GO TO THE MAIN CHALLENGE PAGE, HERE,

OR CLICK THE BUTTON ABOVE.

When you review a book for the 2013 European Reading Challenge, please add it to this list using the linky widget below.  Please link to your review post, NOT the main page of your blog.

NOTE: There is overlap in January 2013 between the last month of the 2012 challenge and the first month of the 2013 challenge. If you participated both years, only count books read in January in one of the years, not both.

Please put your name or the name of your blog, the name of the book you reviewed, and the country of the book or author. For example: Rose City Reader, Doctor Zhivago, Russia.

Books Read in 2012

This is the list of the 94 books I read in 2012, in the order that I read them, with links to the 52 reviews I wrote.

2012 was the first year in quite a while that I didn't read at least 100 books. I blame Whittaker Chambers, whose dense, 800+ page Witness sucked up a lot of reading time.  But the lower total was also intentional.  I made a reading resolution to concentrate on Witness and some other longer books and not pay attention to the number of books I read.

There is not much rhyme or reason to whether I review a book or not. Some of my favorite books go without a review.

I rate a book a 3 if I liked it but wouldn't think of recommending it and a 4 if I would recommend it to anyone. Lots of books get 3.5, which means that I liked it and would recommend it to people who like that genre or type of book.  For a full explanation of my rating system, see here.

If you have reviewed any of the books I reviewed, and you would like your review listed on mine, please leave a comment on my review post for that book with a link to your review and I will add it.

2012 BOOKS

The Coffee Trader by David Liss (3.5/5)

Tinkers by Paul Hardin (2.5/5) (reviewed here)

High Stakes by Dick Francis (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (4/5) (reviewed here)

A Case of Need by Michael Crichton (3/5)

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark (4/5) (reviewed here)

Dracula by Bram Stoker (4/5) (reviewed here)

The Rubber Band by Rex Stout (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

My Grandfather's Son by Clarence Thomas (3.5/5)

Shroud for a Nightingale by P. D. James (3.5/5)

Living by Henry Green (2.5/5) (reviewed here)

Blood Sport by Dick Francis (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe by Thomas Cahill (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Innocents Abroad, Volume I, by Mark Twain (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Serenissima by Erica Jong (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (3.5/5)

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (3.5/5)

The Pothunters by P. G. Wodehouse (3/5) (reviewed here)

What's So Great about Christianity by Dinesh D’Souza (4/5)

A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Murder in Belleville by Cara Black (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Black Tower by P. D. James (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Driving Force by Dick Francis (3.5/5)

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie (3.5/5)

World Without End by Ken Follett (3/5) (reviewed here)

The World of Herb Caen: San Francisco 1938-1997 by Barnaby Conrad (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Black Book by Ian Rankin (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

A Month of Sundays by John Updike (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (4/5) (reviewed here)

Dressed for Death by Donna Leon (3.5/5)

Vie De France: Sharing Food, Friendship and a Kitchen in the Lorie Valley by James Haller (3/5) (reviewed here)

Out Stealing Horses by Per Patterson (3/5)

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (4/5) (reviewed here)

On the Town in New York: The Landmark History of Eating, Drinking, and Entertainments from the American Revolution to the Food Revolution by Michael Ariane Batterberry (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table by Ruth Reichl (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

A Time of Hope by C. P. Snow (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (3.5/5)

Home Truths by David Lodge (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Other People's Children by Joanna Trollope (3.5/5)

Glittering Images by Susan Howatch (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Hapless Valet by Lenhardt Stevens (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman (3/5)

Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst (3.5/5)

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Trespass by Rose Tremain (3.5/5)

Greene on Capri: A Memoir by Shirley Hazzard (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner (4.5/5) (reviewed here)

Starvation Lake by Brian Gruley (3/5)

Paradise Postponed by John Mortimer (3/5) (reviewed here)

Silver Swan by Benjamin Black (3.5/5)

The Gate House by Nelson DeMille (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Edge by Dick Francis (3.5/5)

Writing Places: The Life Journey of a Writer and Teacher by William Zinsser (3.5/5)

The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly (3.5/5)

Witness by Whittaker Chambers (3/5) (reviewed here)

Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow (3/5) (reviewed here)

Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope (3/5)

Swan Peak by James Lee Burke (3.5/5) (reviewed here)


The Comedians by Graham Greene (3.5/5) (reviewed here)
 
Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom (2.5/5) (reviewed here)

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morely (3/5)

Ring for Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (3.5/5)

The Folks That Live on the Hill by Kingsley Amis (3.5/5)

Death at the Bar by Ngaio Marsh (3.5/5)

Venetian Mask by Mickey Friedman (3/5)

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates by Michael Bond (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren (3/5) (reviewed here)

Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (3/5)

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester (3.5/5)

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Imperfectionists by Tm Rachman (3.5/5)

The General's Daughter by Nelson DeMille (3.5/5)

Evolutionaries: Transformational Leadership: The Missing Link in Your Organizational Chart by Carmen E Voillequé and Randy Harrington (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (3/5) (reviewed here)

Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes (3.5/5)

May We Borrow Your Husband? & Other Comedies of the Sexual Life by Graham Greene (4/5) (reviewed here)

Fortune's Deadly Descent by Audrey Braun (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Death of an Expert Witness by P. D. James (3.5/5)

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott (3.5/5)

The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré (4/5) (reviewed here)

The Book & the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch (4/5) (reviewed here)

A Personal Odyssey by Thomas Sowell (3.5/5)

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni (3.5/5)

The Children of Men by P. D. James (3.5/5)

About Face by Donna Leon (3/5)

Lift by Kelly Corrigan (3/5)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (4/5)

Friends and Lovers by Helen MacInnes (3/5)

See's Famous Old Time Candies: A Sweet Story by Margaret Moos Pick (3/5)