Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is hosted this month at Rose City Reader.  I don't usually participate, but this week I'm going to drop in a little late and highlight some really exciting things I procured this week.  I'll save you from highlighting my embarrassing number of purchases.  Just the highlights:

For Review:

This is Swamplandia by Karen Russell which releases on February 1st.  I just got a copy today from Knopf and I absolutely am jumping out of my skin to read it.  If you want to know why, here is the description (from Goodreads):

The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline—think Buddenbrooks set in the Florida Everglades—and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as the World of Darkness. Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve, must manage seventy gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief. Her mother, Swamp landia!’s legendary headliner, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost called the Dredgeman; her brother has secretly defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their sinking family afloat; and her father, Chief Bigtree, is AWOL. To save her family, Ava must journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine.


Bought: 

 Eleanor Brown, The Weird Sisters - This is getting some buzz and I love reading about readers, so I'm looking forward to this one.



Won: 

Brunonia Barry,  The Map of True Places- I won this from The Red Lady's Reading Room and I will admit that I mostly entered because the cover of the book was beautiful.  However, I've been reading about it and looking through it and getting pretty stoked to read it.




Library: (not technically my mailbox)

Maira Kalman, And the Pursuit of Happiness - I am really intrigued by this book; however, not enough to buy it.  So, I showed some restraint and waited for it on hold at the library and it came in this week.  My restraint paid off and I was excited to get it.


Have you all read these books?  Did you like them?