'Yours Ever' Contest Giveaway

In honor of Valentine's Day, I decided to have a contest giveaway of Thomas Mallon's engaging book, 'Yours Ever: People and Their Letters'. I first wrote about this book when it was published in Nov. 2009. Now that I've finished it, I thought I would tell you a little bit about it.

I am greatly impressed with Mr. Mallon's knowledge and research into all of the people and collections he features. This erudite writer offers fascinating glimpses into the lives of the letter writers he has selected, and there are quite a few. Some of the letters include:

Seeing history through the eyes of Winston and Clementine Churchill.

Seeing prison through the bars of Jean Harris's cell.

Seeing life through the eyes of an invalid, Flannery O'Connor. All are very intriguing and bring their own drama.

Sometimes I was lost as I wasn't sure who some of the people were and sometimes I thought he went on a little too long, but overall, I knew most of the letter writers and it was very enjoyable reading. He has an engaging writing style and spends some of the book talking about the writing of the book. An example of this is when he introduces us to the chapter called Spirit and explains his challenge in finding different ways to say the word letter without being too repetitive.

Contest Rules
1. Leave a comment with a Valentine Greeting to the readers of this blog (also leave your email address, twitter name or blog name so that I can find you if you should win).

2. Leave a link to this blog on your blog or twitter or facebook and post a comment with a link to your posting. And leave a comment with the information.

3. If you've read the book, leave your comments on what you thought about it for another entry.

4. I will draw a name at 1:00pm CT on Sunday, February 14, 2010 and will contact the winner directly to get their mailing information. They will have 1 week to respond with the information at which time I will randomly select another person.

For each link/tweet, you will get one entry. Plus, your Valentine greeting/comment will get you an entry.

I want to thank Rebecca at Random House for providing the hard cover of Yours Ever as the prize.