Thank you to everyone who’s entered the giveaway. I am loving all of the responses and daydreaming about visiting the places you guys mentioned. A friend asked me what my destination would be and I am going to be sneaky and say that I’d take a jet plane to Monterrey to visit my family, then we’d hop over to Germany to visit my husband’s family and finally we’d go relax in Italy, where I’ve always wanted to go. Anyway, there’s still time to enter if you haven’t yet, and yes, it is open to international entries.

So, this weekend was busy with chores and stuff and I am still behind on my blog reading and such but I did carve out some time to read a short story for the R.I.P. Challenge. Actually, I’m done with my challenge but I haven’t had a chance to post reviews and besides maybe I’ll even get another book read so no wrap up post just yet, but back to the short story.

Yesterday I read Andi’s enthusiastic review of her reading so far of 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill, and as I’ve had that book on my shelf for quite a while, I thought it’s time to pick it up.

I only read the first story, Best New Horror, and I think I’m going to be in for quite a ride. The story features Eddie Carroll, an editor of an anthology of horror fiction, who has grown disillusioned with the quality of the stories that come across his desk.

But one day he receives a story called “Buttonboy”, which is so disturbing and different that he decides he wants to publish it in his anthology but first he must meet the author. As he looks for the author, who from all accounts is a very strange man, Eddie recounts more of the story for us the readers. And, yes, it’s quite a revolting tale, but most disturbing of all is how Eddie somehow becomes a part of the story.

Great short story and what a great ending. I am really looking forward to reading more of this book but I can guarantee it won’t be my night time read. Shudders at that thought! Anyway, hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a review for you of another spooky story.

Bestselling author Sue Monk Kidd has new book out and this time it’s a memoir written with her daughter. Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel throughout Greece and France. Sue, coming to grips with aging, caught in a creative vacuum, longing to reconnect with her grown daughter, struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel. Ann, just graduated from college, heartbroken and benumbed by the classic question about what to do with her life, grapples with a painful depression. As this modern-day Demeter and Persephone chronicle the richly symbolic and personal meaning of an array of inspiring figures and sites, they also each give voice to that most protean of connections: the bond of mother and daughter.

Here’s a snippet from the book:

Sitting on a bench in the National Archaeological Museum in Greece, I watch my twenty-two-year-old daughter, Ann, angle her camera before a marble bas- relief of Demeter and Persephone unaware of the small ballet she’s performing— her slow, precise steps forward, the tilt of her head, the way she dips to one knee as she turns her torso, leaning into the sharp afternoon light. The scene reminds me of something, a memory maybe, but I can’t recall what. I only know she looks beautiful and impossibly grown, and for reasons not clear to me I’m possessed by an acute feeling of loss. You can read more here.

Doesn’t it sound good? Well, I’ve got two copies of Traveling With Pomegranates to give away! So, because I love to travel and this book also has travel as a backdrop, if you want to enter to win a copy all you have to do is tell me where in the world would you like to go to right now if time/money was not a problem.

The winners will be announced next Friday, Oct. 2.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. I’m hoping to catch up on reviews and lots of blog reading. I’m so behind!