Mailbox Monday 7/13/09

It wasn't a busy week but that is probably a good thing because I've made a commitment to read some of the books that have been sitting on my tbr pile for much to long now. I'm pleased with what did come this week though:

We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg
Book Description from aNobii:
"Elizabeth Berg, bestselling author of The Art of Mending and The Year of Pleasures, has a rare talent for revealing her characters’ hearts and minds in a manner that makes us empathize completely. Her new novel, We Are All Welcome Here, features three women, each struggling against overwhelming odds for her own kind of freedom.
It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis’s birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently–and violently–across the state. But in Paige Dunn’s small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in the way she sees fit–with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.
Diana is trying in her own fashion to live a normal life. As a fourteen-year-old, she wants to make money for clothes and magazines, to slough off the authority of her mother and Peacie, to figure out the puzzle that is boys, and to escape the oppressiveness she sees everywhere in her small town. What she can never escape, however, is the way her life is markedly different from others’. Nor can she escape her ongoing responsibility to assist in caring for her mother. Paige Dunn is attractive, charming, intelligent, and lively, but her needs are great–and relentless.
As the summer unfolds, hate and adversity will visit this modest home. Despite the difficulties thrust upon them, each of the women will find her own path to independence, understanding, and peace. And Diana’s mother, so mightily compromised, will end up giving her daughter an extraordinary gift few parents could match."
Sepulchre by Kate Mosse
From The Washington Post:
"Kate Mosse has capitalized on the success of Labyrinth with a new novel boasting similar elements: strong female heroines, dual narratives connected across a vast span of years, the villages of southwestern France and even a search for historic artifacts. But this time it's a quest for family secrets -- not a treasure hunt -- that binds the twinned tales.
In 1891, 17-year-old Léonie Vernier simply can't understand her older brother, Anatole, and his extreme sensitivity about his private life; she never met his last lover but does try to ease his grief at the woman's burial during the book's opening scene. So when the siblings are invited six months later to visit Domaine de la Cade, the country estate of recently widowed Aunt Isolde, Léonie anticipates some quality time with Anatole -- and a chance to catch up on her macabre reading. She discovers "stories about devils, evil spirits and ghosts associated with this region" and explores a creepy old sepulchre on the estate's grounds. But stolen glances between Anatole and their surprisingly beautiful aunt leave Léonie feeling the odd woman out. Worse, she's ignorant of a greater danger lurking behind the pair's secretiveness: a lover from Isolde's past -- spurned, duped and now hell-bent on revenge.
Shift to 2007: Meredith Martin takes a break from researching her biography of composer Claude Debussy to delve into her own family history. She's led by an old photograph and a piece of sheet music titled "Sepulchre 1891" to visit -- you guessed it -- the Domaine de la Cade. En route, she stops for a Tarot reading and finds the spitting image of herself on the face on one of the cards -- La Justice, of course. Once she arrives at the ancient estate, she becomes embroiled in a contemporary mystery involving the "accidental" death of one of the domaine's co-owners.
Mosse achieves an admirable completeness here -- not just in the dual stories' tight parallels but in the vividly rendered settings, the careful interweaving of historical detail, even the nuanced depictions of these characters, particularly Léonie. But despite Mosse's stylistic skill, the story skirts dangerously close to cliche -- figures lurk in distant shadows, the wind whistles, storms rage. At least four major incidents take place on Halloween, and just when you think the book has everything but a mob of angry villagers, you get that too: "on the distant horizon . . . a line of flaming torches, gold and ochre against the black night sky."
All of this might seem damning if Sepulchre weren't such a giddy read. Throughout, Mosse intertwines her literary influences and the story at hand as playfully, intricately and suspensefully as she melds the material and the supernatural, past and present. Everything intersects in a goose bump-inducing finale at the sepulchre, which bears an inscription warning all who enter: "Fujhi, poudes; Escapa, non." (Flee, you may; escape, you cannot.) But really, with a book this much fun, who would want to do either?"
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Amazon.com Review:
"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
--Randy Pausch
A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.
In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come. "

And something new on my blog- a little music. I received this CD in the mail thanks to Alicia at Lonesome Records. The link is on my sidebar.
Appalachia: Music From Home Various Artists
Product Description from Amazon:
"A richly diverse sampling of music that embodies the spirit and cultures of those who have lived in this complex land. Accompanying the four part PBS series Appalachia: A History of Mountains & People (to air April 2009), it pays respect to pioneers (Ralph Stanley, Jean Ritchie, Dock Boggs), and embraces new musical artists (Darrell Scott, Blue Highway, Robin & Linda Williams), who are keeping the music alive into the 21st Century."