A Readers Giveaway

Not too long ago Paula, over at "Sweet Pea"'s blog had a book giveaway and I was the lucky winner of Best Friends which I am reading now. I thought it was a great idea to share some of our favorite books -- so today I've got a collection of books by Michael Lee West also known in the blogging world as "Gollum" of "Designs by Gollum". I've loved these books and I know that one of you will too!

1st up we have American Pie. This is the blurb in the back of the book. "When a freak accident brings three very different sisters together again, they end up confronting their past, their future, and one another in this hilarious and moving novel."


Next, She Flew The Coop. "The two main occupations in Limoges, Louisiana (population: 905), seem to be spreading juicy gossip and consoling the unfortunate with casseroles. Ind in this early spring of 1952, there is ample opportunity for both--with sixteen-year-old and pregnant (by the Baptist minister) Olive Nepper, currently languishing in a coma after drinking pop laced with rose poison. But the plight of Olive and her family is hardly the only story spicing up the rumor mill in this small Southern community of unpredictable eccentrics, wandering husbands, and unsatisfied wives--and few local sins will be put right by home cooking. From Michael Lee West comes a beautifully rendered portrait of small-town Southern life, filled with humanity that brilliantly weaves comedy with dark calamity."



Or how about Consuming Passions? "Laced with delicious secret recipes passed from generation to generation, Consuming Passions is Michael Lee West's delightfully quirky memoir of an adventurous food-obsessed life. By watching a multitude of relatives cook, squabble, and carry on tradition, West went from a noncooking student to a full-on gourmet of food and words. Throughout, she lends her distinctive humor and often hilarious insights to stories about her trials and tribulations as a Southern woman who becomes an "accidental gourmet." In this irresistible memoir, mothers swing from chandeliers, elderly aunts brew love potions, a South American nymphomaniac stirs up trouble at a Louisiana barbecue joint, and a cabbage-eating ghost haunts relatives--all in pursuit of good food. Using her own experience and the witticisms of relatives, West fills these pages with insights such as "Never share men or recipes. Something's bound to get stolen" and "Live and learn. Die and get food. That's the Southern way." Wonderfully presented and thoroughly entertaining, this warm and witty work unites West's evocative voice and humor with the uniquely American form of kitchen tales."


And last, my favorite -- Mermaids in the Basement. "Reeling from the loss of her mother, plagued with a bad case of writer's block (and don't even talk about those extra twenty pounds), Renata DeChavannes feels as though everything is just plain wrong. And that was before the tabloids caught her sweetheart, filmmaker Ferg lauderdale, sharing an intimate squeeze with Hollywood's hottest young tamale. But the granddaughter of the formidable Honora DeChavannes possesses more hell than belle in her backbone--and she's about to reclaim it. Heading south to Honora's home on the Gulf Coast, Renata is determined to stop feeling like a wilted gardenia and emerge as the unstoppable kudzu her beloved grandmother proudly proclaimed she would be. But for that to happen Renata's got to face some not-so-genteel ghosts from her past, discover the truth about the mother she desparately misses, and make peace with the first man who abandoned her and broke her heart: her handsome and distant father.

So it's really simple -- if you think these are books you would enjoy...just throw you name in the hat. I'll keep this open until Tuesday night -- then I'll pick a name and put these in the mail on Wednesday so that by next weekend....


....one of you will be reading these!

Good luck!

See ya.