Book Party Brag Box

I hope you all had a lovely Mother's Day weekend. I tried to come up with a post about the best moms of literature, but I found the field, at least from what I've read recently, to be kind of lacking. Then I read TIME magazine's "Best Moms" list for inspiration and when I got to Dumbo's mom it, uh, got a little dusty in my room, so I gave up. (I never even liked that movie!) But here's to my mom anyway, who read SNIPP, SNAPP, SNURR AND THE GINGERBREAD, GO DOG GO and STREGA NONA to me at least 100,000 times.

I did end up going to the book giveaway party I mentioned on Friday and holy cow, what a haul! There were about 10 of us there and between us we probably walked away with half the books on the shelves (plus one guest with a car promised to take away everything that remained on Moving Day -- awesome for the hostess). Here's what I picked up:

• Steven Gaines, PHILISTINES AT THE HEDGEROW: PASSION AND PROPERTY IN THE HAMPTONS -- I spotted this one at the Strand a few times but ended up putting it back; still, I can't resist something free!
• Jillian Medoff, HUNGER POINT
• Jennifer Belle, HIGH MAINTENANCE -- Jennifer Belle is a New York City-based novelist whose name seems to turn up on blogs and in reviews all the time. Now I can see what the fuss is about with her second novel.
• Eric Garcia, CASSANDRA FRENCH'S FINISHING SCHOOL FOR BOYS
• Sarah Dunn, THE BIG LOVE -- Read in 2006, gave it away, wanted to reread it again.
• Elizabeth Noble, THINGS I WANT MY DAUGHTERS TO KNOW
• Sheri Holman, THE MAMMOTH CHEESE -- I read Holman's book THE DRESS LODGER back in high school when she came to speak to our school, at which time she was working on this second novel about a small town trying to break a record set by Thomas Jefferson.
• Nick Fowler, A THING (OR TWO) ABOUT CURTIS AND CAMILLA
• Marisha Pessl, SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS -- I named it one of my favorite fiction books of 2006 but I read it so fast I barely had a chance to absorb it. The hostess had it in paperback and liked it but not enough to keep it, which is lucky for me.

I told my mom about the party when I called her for Mother's Day and she said, "You should throw one of those!" Sheesh. Yeah.