Mailbox Monday

A couple of weeks ago I went to Erin Blakemore's reading/signing of her new book, The Heroine's Bookshelf, and she said that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is her favorite book. Since my taste and Erin's in literary heroines seems to jive, I figured I was doing myself a disservice by not reading this coming-of-age classic by Betty Smith.

I'm happy to say that I ordered it and it arrived last week, and has leap-frogged several other very worthy books on my TBR shelf.

I was inspired by all my fellow bloggers doing the RIP challenge and even though I didn't sign up for the challenge officially this year, I decided to read a few of the mysteries that have been taking up TBR shelf space for way too long. One was Blood Lure, in the Nevada Barr series that features park ranger Anna Pigeon. I enjoyed it so much that I ordered and received the next in the series, Hunting Season. So much for freed up TBR shelf space!

I found out about reincarnation series by M.J. Rose on another blog, and since I love time travel stories, I thought this might be a great new adventure for me. The first book, The Reincarnationist, arrived last week.

Finally, I reordered and received a book I read and loved and lost many years ago--Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, by Phyllis Rose. It profiles Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle, Effie Gray and John Ruskin, Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill, Catherine Hogarth and Charles Dickens, and George Eliot and George Henry Lewes. Since I recently read about Charles Dickens and his mistress, Nelly Ternan, and I'm about to continue reading stuff by and about George Eliot, the timing for rereading this couldn't be better.