I am super late getting to this post, but in my defense, at the end of December, I only had a laptop computer to work on and I was super busy emptying out our house to prepare to leave Germany forever (or until the kids are grown up and out of the house). But I did have the foresight to at least take the picture of the books I'd received before the movers packed our stuff up in the middle of the month, so I at least know which books I'd gotten prior to that point. And since I really only have half a months books to include here, this is going to be a shorter mail call post than normal.
Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
The acclaimed national bestseller, the first and only diary written by a Guantánamo detainee during his imprisonment, now with previously censored material restored.When GUANTÁNAMO DIARY was first published--heavily redacted by the U.S. government--in 2015, Mohamedou Ould Slahi was still imprisoned at the detainee camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, despite a federal court ruling ordering his release, and it was unclear when or if he would ever see freedom. In October 2016, he was finally released and reunited with his family. During his 14-year imprisonment, the United States never charged him with a crime.
Now for the first time, he is able to tell his story in full, with previously censored material restored. This searing diary is not merely a vivid record of a miscarriage of justice, but a deeply personal memoir---terrifying, darkly humorous, and surprisingly gracious. GUANTÁNAMO DIARY is a document of immense emotional power and historical importance.
She Who Destroys the Light by Shahida Arabi
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
The best fairy tales are the untold stories, the ones where the powerless take back their power and emerge as the victors, but not before enduring a long, arduous battle with the self and the world. In her debut poetry collection, 'She Who Destroys The Light: Fairy Tales Gone Wrong,' Shahida Arabi candidly explores the themes of destruction and resurrection, unraveling the dark realities of abuse, trauma, heartbreak and the survivor's convoluted journey to freedom, healing, creativity and self-love. This collection provides an uncensored and raw exploration into the complexities of adversity and agency, offering a rare glimpse of what it truly means to survive and rise again from the impact of emotional and psychological violence.
The Kings of Big Spring by Bryan Mealer
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
A saga of family, fortune, faith in Texas, where blood is bond and oil is king…
In 1892, Bryan Mealer’s great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author’s father, religion is only an agent for rebellion.
In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, “How'd you like to be a millionaire?”
Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring’s streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight.
Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider’s journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life.
A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. And in telling the story of four generations of his family, Mealer also tells the story of America came to be.
Fowl Language: The Struggle is Real by Brian Gordon
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
The Internet sensation, Fowl Language Comics, is back with its second book, Fowl Language: The Struggle Is Real, the perfect parenting humor book for anyone who liked Toddlers Are A**holes!
“This Guy’s Comics Hilariously Sum Up the Truth About Being a Parent.”
—Buzzfeed
He's back, and he's totally got parenting figured out this time. KIDDING.
It's another collection of Fowl Language comics, ripped from the headlines of this author's actual friggin' life.
You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll swear. It's almost exactly like a day of parenting, except without the annoying little people.
The Sea Peoples by S.M. Stirling
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
S. M. Stirling’s Novels of the Change are a “truly original combination of postapocalyptic sci-fi and military-oriented medieval fantasy”* about a future where mysterious Powers removed advanced technology, and humanity rebuilds society. However, this new world is not always a peaceful one....
The spirit of troubadour Prince John, the brother of Crown Princess Órlaith, has fallen captive to the power of the Yellow Raja and his servant, the Pallid Mask. Prince John’s motley band of friends and followers—headed by Captain Pip of Townsville and Deor Godulfson—must lead a quest through realms of shadow and dreams to rescue Prince John from a threat far worse than death.
Meanwhile, across the sea, Japanese Empress Reiko and Órlaith, heir to the High Kingdom of Montival, muster their kingdoms for war, making common cause with the reborn Kingdom of Hawaii. But more than weapons or even the dark magic of the sorcerers of Pyongyang threaten them; Órlaith's lover, Alan Thurston, might be more than he appears.
From the tropical waters off Hilo and Pearl Harbor, to the jungles and lost cities of the Ceram Sea, a game will be played where the fate of the world is at stake.
A Search in Secret Egypt by Paul Brunton
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
In this book, philosopher Paul Brunton (1898-1981) encounters the mysteries and magic of Egypt in the 1930s, including an eerie yet illuminating night spent alone inside the Great Pyramid. Alongside his explorations of ancient Egypt's monuments and gods, Brunton encounters a variety of occultists, fakirs, and dervishes, and even manages to become initiated into the deadly art of snake charming. His frank interviews with Muslim leaders remain relevant today, and his description of the Hajj reflects the beauty and inspiring faith of Mohammad's true followers. Brunton's journey to discover the furthest reaches of what the mind and body are capable of--and to distinguish various forms of yoga and magic from true spirituality--lead him to the myth of Osiris and to the mystery that is the Sphinx itself. In the end, Brunton turns his attention to his own spiritual path, connecting all of his experiences into a single discovery: that we are more than the body and that the freedom of our spirit can be experienced here and now. This new edition has been updated to incorporate Brunton's final revisions and includes an introduction by the Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation.
Choosing a Master: Vampires and the Life of Erin Rose by S.M. Perlow
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
“Like the blood of God…”
In New Orleans, a passage from a Renaissance-era book is Ethan’s only hope to save the woman he loves. He’s a vampire, so he can live forever. Ellie, however, is mortal, ill, and running out of time.
“If Sanguan vampires drank synthetic blood, like Spectavi vampires, the world would be so much safer for humans.”
In the Spectavi laboratory where synthetic blood was created, Vera is making no progress with her current projects. But for her devotion to the Spectavi cause—and their leader—she will go to any lengths.
“She would hold me when she bites, and at least while she sips my blood, I wouldn’t be alone.”
In a nightclub in France, John has an unusual encounter with a gorgeous vampire, but his love for a mortal woman forces him into a devastating choice.
Reason or passion, good or evil, duty, love, or pure pleasure—in a world with two vampire factions at war, choosing the right master is everything.
It's All Relative by A.J. Jacobs
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs undergoes a hilarious, heartfelt quest to understand what constitutes family—where it begins and how far it goes—and attempts to untangle the true meaning of the “Family of Humankind.”
A.J. Jacobs has received some strange emails over the years, but this note was perhaps the strangest: “You don’t know me, but I’m your eighth cousin. And we have over 80,000 relatives of yours in our database.”
That’s enough family members to fill Madison Square Garden four times over. Who are these people, A.J. wondered, and how do I find them? So began Jacobs’s three-year adventure to help build the biggest family tree in history.
Jacobs’s journey would take him to all seven continents. He drank beer with a US president, found himself singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and unearthed genetic links to Hollywood actresses and real-life scoundrels. After all, we can choose our friends, but not our family.
Chronicles of the Fallen: A Policeman's Tale by A.S. Chambers
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
Author Andrew Chambers is a bit of recluse. He prefers the solitude of his peaceful farm in the middle of nowhere just outside of Chicago. But being invited to a convention for newly published books and authors is exciting. Though Chambers knows traveling to New York City could be a crazy and frightening journey, he embarks on the adventure.
On his first day out and about in New York, Chambers follows a path his father and grandfather before him took. He finds himself in Central Park at the Chess Pavilion sitting across the table from Connor MacCarith, a former Chicago policeman. MacCarith was known as one of the bravest policeman of his time, and unfortunately, he paid dearly while breaking up a speakeasy in the late 1930s. Chambers wants to hear the story of this hero's life.
MacCarith begins his tale when he was only nineteen years old and change in one of the unruliest cities in Chicago. What follows is a narrative filled with adventure and interesting characters, sharing a chronicle of friendship, death, justice, and passion.
Return of the Founding Fathers' Guardians by David M. Burke
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| Photo Credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
A small group of men and women, fed up with the oppression that grips this once great country, is determined to set the nation back on course. To achieve this, these loyal Americans must fight a heart-pounding modern day war. They face corrupt forces desperate not to lose control of the middle class - the government of the United States, and those who run some of the largest organizations on earth will stop at nothing to end this resurgence. For the first time ever, this explosive thriller outlines a biblically correct explanation of how we might see The Return of The Founding Fathers.
So that is all of the books that I'd received by December 17th when the movers came to start packing up our house. Any books received after that date were forwarded to my parents house and will be included in a future mail call post, which I will hopefully be getting posted in the next few days, maybe. So which of these books are you most interested to hear my thoughts on? - Katie
