Mailbox Monday

Mondays in August, Chick Loves Lit will be hosting Mailbox Monday, created by The Printed Page!

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Without further ado, here's what arrived last week...

Hamlet's Dresser: A Memoir, by Bob Smith

I discovered this on another blog, and thought it sounded intriguing. I'm a big Shakespeare fan, and always interested in how authors and their books affect the lives of their readers. From the PW blurb on Amazon, "In this intimate, inspiring account, Smith concludes that words and ideas possess the ability to heal and transform a life no matter how dire and painful the circumstances, using his own difficult childhood and productive adulthood as proof. Here, the literary balm is the work of Shakespeare...Throughout this triumphant book, the shadow of Shakespeare looms, and Smith finds meaning in the plays to redeem his daily existence, eventually becoming Hamlet's dresser at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, where he delights in the workings of theater and meeting Katharine Hepburn, Jessica Tandy and others." Much as I love novels, I'm looking forward to a memoir, a genre I haven't read in awhile.

Charlotte Gray, by Sebastian Faulks
I read about Birdsong, another of Faulks's novels, on another blog and was intrigued by the story, but decided to start with this one, partly because everything I know about the French resistance during WWII I learned from Casablanca, and partly because I want to watch the movie, which is languishing on my NetFlix queue until I read the book first. But, I'm looking forward to reading Birdsong soon as well.


Something Fresh, P.G. Wodehouse
I picked this up at the book exchange at my last JASNA meeting. I haven't read Wodehouse in probably >20 years and need a good laugh, and to balance the grimmer stuff I've been reading lately.