Mother’s Day ~ Time for Book Giveaways

Happy Mother’s Day to all of my readers out there.  I hope that your day was special and full of love.  Mine certainly was.  I got a gift basket full of wonderful bath accoutrements and a pair of vibrating slippers.  Ooo, la, la!  I got the morning to myself in which to nearly finish Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier and took a nice, long, hot, refreshing shower.  I then went outside with the family and we played badminton (poorly) and had a great time.  God really could not have given mothers in the Roanoke Valley a nicer day to enjoy.

I also want to hold a fun book giveaway filled with books related to mothers in some way, shape or form.  I meant to have this up earlier today, but Frenchman’s Creek was so good and Danny and I watched a movie last night…  I know, excuses, excuses…  So, as a treat to all the mothers out there (or just those who have mothers), I’m hosting a chance to win the following books:

The Marge Book by Matt Groening is an illustrated book of wisdom from Springfield’s most beloved mother, Marge Simpson.  This really is a cute book and fun to flip through for some chuckles.  Here is the description from the  HarperCollins website: 

Marge Simpson, the woman with the impossibly blue and improbably high hairdo, is a complex woman with an inner life, hopes and dreams, and an incorrigible family that she holds together with a healthy homemade helping of common sense. Join the coupon-clipping queen of discount shopping at the nearby Sprawl-Mart, at a meeting of the school PTA, in the middle of a bodice-ripping romance novel, at a theatrical performance of her one-woman show, or in her crusade against cartoon violence, domestic strife, and suburbia’s quiet life of desperation . . . or at least her desperate hop that no one will hold anything that Homer or Bart does against her personally.

Thank you to Greg at HarperCollins for providing this copy of the book!

From Harvey River: a memoir of my mother and her island by Lorna Goodison.  Here is the description from the HarperCollins website:

When Doris Harvey’s English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his family’s home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the “fabulous Harvey girls,” and where the rich local bounty of Lucea yams, pimentos, and mangoes went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties of her parents’ house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to “hard life” Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters.

In Lorna Goodison’s luminous memoir of her forebears, we meet a cast of wonderfully drawn characters, including George O’Brian Wilson, the Irish patriarch of the family who marries a Guinea woman after coming to Jamaica in the mid-1800s; Doris’s parents, Margaret and David, childhood sweethearts who become the first family of Harvey River; and Margaret and David’s eight children.

In lush, vivid prose, textured with the cadences of Creole speech, Lorna Goodison weaves together memory and mythology to create a vivid tapestry. She takes us deep into the heart of a complete world to tell a universal story of family and the ties that bind us to the place we call home.

Thank you to Jocelyn from HarperCollins for providing this copy of the book!

Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do by Wednesday Martin, Ph.D. Here’s a description from the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt website:

A groundbreaking and truly stepmother-centered way of understanding the tensions that seem to define relations between women and their stepchildren.

Half of all women in the United States will live with or marry a man with children. And what woman with stepchildren has not—in order to defuse the often overwhelming challenges of the role—referred to herself as a “stepmonster”? 

As Hope Edelman does in her book for motherless daughters, Wednesday Martin’s empowering and original Stepmonster unlocks the emotional mysteries of why stepmothers think and feel and act the way they do. Martin draws upon her own experience as a stepmother, interviews with other stepmothers and stepchildren, and fascinating insights from literature, anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology to reveal the little-understood realities of this most demanding role. 

Stepmonster illuminates the harrowing process of becoming a stepmother, considers the myths and realities of being married to a man with children, counteracts the cultural notion that stepmothers are solely responsible for the challenges they encounter, identifies the “Five Step-Dilemmas That Create Conflict,” and considers the emotional and social challenges men with children face when they remarry. 

Finally, in an unexpected twist, Martin shows why the myth of the Wicked Stepmother is our single best tool for understanding who real stepmothers are and how they feel.

Thank you to Megan from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing this copy of the book!

Of Men and Their Mothers by Mameve Medwed. Here is the description from the HarperCollins website:
 

It’s a truth that the newly unhyphenated Maisie Grey has learned the hard way. After getting rid of her mama’s-boy husband, she happily settles down with her teenage son, Tommy. But she’s still stuck with the hovering presence of her impossible mother-in-law, Tommy’s grandmother, who refuses to exit the family stage gracefully.

Trying to keep it together with her own business and a new relationship with a man who still lives in—where else but?—his mother’s house, Maisie struggles to learn from the MIL-from-hell. She vows that when Tommy brings someone home, she’ll be loving, empathetic, and supportive. But then along comes completely unsuitable September Silva—with her too-short skirts, black nail polish, and stay-out-all-night attitude—who is forcing Maisie to take a flinty, clear-eyed new look at what it means to be a mother.

Thank you to Joseph from William Morrow for providing this copy of the book!

How Not to Be a Domestic Goddess… always go to bed on an argument by Deborah Ross. This book is a collection of items from the author’s popular column in the Daily Mail. There is some really funny tidbits in this book, making it perfect for the woman who takes a more sarcastic look at their various roles. For me, this is made even more funny by the British vernacular. Here is the description from the Profile Books website:

Here are Mrs Ross’s handy tips on every aspect of household management: skincare, fashion and beauty, children, dealing with blackened ovenware*, leftovers** and freezing***. And here is useful advice on how to get a ‘lifestyle’ if you suspect you don’t have a proper one.

Some people have fabulous bodies and accomplished kids and amazing parenting skills and ideal jobs and harmonious marital relationships. This book is not for them. It is for the rest of us: we, the 99 per cent of the population who are not so blessed and cannot decide whether to laugh or cry. Answer: laugh.
*soak, soak, soak, then throw away when nobody is looking.
**decant carefully into Tupperware, place in fridge, leave for a week then throw out when nobody is looking.
***leave for a decade, then throw out when nobody is looking.

Thank you to Rachel from Meryl Zegarek Public Relations, Inc. for prividing this copy of the book!

My Mother, Your Mother: Embracing “Slow Medicine,” the Compassionate Approach to Caring for Your Aging Loved Ones by Dennis McCullough, M.D. Here is the description from the HarperCollins website:

Thanks to advances in science and medicine, our parents are living longer than ever before. But our health-care system doesn’t perform as well when decline eventually sets in. We want to do our best as our loved ones face new complications—more diseases and disabilities—demanding further need for support and careful judgment, but the choices we have to make can seem overwhelming.

Family doctor and geriatrician Dennis McCullough recommends a new approach: Slow Medicine. Shaped by common sense and kindness, it advocates for careful anticipatory “attending” to an elder’s changing needs rather than waiting for crises that force acute medical interventions—thereby improving the quality of elders’ extended late lives without bankrupting their families financially or emotionally. This is not a plan for preparing for death; it is a plan for understanding, for caring, and for helping those you love live well during their final years.

Thank you to HarperCollins for providing this copy of the book!

How to Enter:

To enter this Mother’s Day contest, please leave a separate comment for each book you would like an opportunity to win. This contest is open until Saturday, May 16 at 11:59 pm EST. The winners will be announced  after the selections are made using list randomizer on Sunday the 17th. You can earn an extra entry for each book you want by letting people know about this contest through Twitter, email, or by posting about it.  Just be sure to let me know you did it.  Good luck, and Happy Mother’s Day again!