Mailbox Monday: New Books for the New Year

It's been a long time since I participated in Mailbox Monday!  It's not that I haven't been getting books in the mail, or elsewhere, it's just that it can be rather time consuming to track where my books came from, and to add all of the book, author, and blog links.  (I'm sure many of you can relate.) Anyway, I cast aside my laziness in this regard, because I do want to post more often this year.  ;)

Here are the new books I've gotten recently.  I won some of them on other blogs.

I won Unlocking Worlds: A Reading Companion for Book Lovers by Sally Allen and Book Life: A Book Lover's Journal by William Mc Kay from Vicki's blog, I'd Rather Be At The Beach and iRead Book Tours.

I won the Brenda Jackson mini notebook and cowboy bookmark from Renee's blog, Black 'n Gold Girl's Book Spot.

Paradise Drive by Rebecca Foust is from Poetic Book Tours for an upcoming tour date, as mentioned in my previous post.

The I Heart Trader Joe's Vegetarian Cookbook by Kris Holchek Peters was a Christmas gift from my husband.  I didn't see it under the tree on Christmas morning, and so my sweet hubby presented it to me several days later (it was nice to get a "late" Christmas gift).  I really do love Trader Joe's and know that I'll enjoy trying some of these recipes.  I hope to participate in some food-related reading challenges this year, like the one created several years ago by Margot from Joyfully Retired, Foodies Read, which will be hosted in 2016 by The Spirit Blog.  I'm a bit of a foodie. Anyone who follows me on Instagram knows this--I take a lot of pictures of food!

Thursday, 1:17 PM, is a (uniquely titled) new book by Michael Landweber that I received in the mail from Catherine from Coffeetown Press.  This book will be available to the public in May of 2016.

So there you have it, my most recent "Mailbox" books!  Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia from To Be Continued, and is now hosted on its own blog with the help of Vicki, Leslie, and Serena.  What did you find in your mailbox recently?  Have a terrific Monday, and thanks for reading! 

First Book of the Year: 2016

The first one should be extraordinary, or at least special in some way.  Although I'm a tad late, I'm excited to participate in The First Book of the Year, hosted by Sheila from Book Journey, for the second consecutive year.  After giving it some thought, I chose to start my reading year with Paradise Drive by Rebecca Foust.  Press 53 Poetry series editor Tom Lombardo calls Paradise Drive  "a collection of irony and metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche, with a dose of synesthesia" in the introduction.  That sounds like a great way to "kick-start" my 2016 reading!  I'm participating in the book tour for this collection of contemporary sonnets with Poetic Book Tours, and my review of it will post later this month.  Today I began the book and have read several of the poems, which are quite insightful and eloquent.  I'm pictured above with the book, and with my darling dog, Daisy; I've included an additional photo of the book as well.

Happy New Year to all!  What is your first book of 2016?  Your comments are welcomed.