BoxWalla is a new subscription company that has four different genres of boxes: beauty, food, film, and book. This is a review of the book box!
This box was sent to us at no cost for review. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
The Subscription Box: BoxWalla Book
The Cost: $49.95 every other month
Ships to: US for free, Canada for $11.95, Internationally for $18.95
The theme of this box is Love in Three Formats. The packaging of this subscription is top notch. The box itself is beautiful, and will definitely be reused. The letter from the Drunken Boxwallas is on thick, beautiful paper, and the other side is printed with a crosshatch. I'll find someway to recycle this paper in my office decor, that's for sure!
February's box is sold out, but you can sign up for April's box here.
Obvious State small notebook - $6.00
This is a beautiful small notebook. It is about 5 inches high and has 32 lightly lined pages. This is a great size to keep in either your pocket or your purse! Obvious State is a US company that prints their products in the US on recycled book paper. How fun is that?
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson - $12.78
Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, and classicist. The Drunken Boxwallas say the book is "both a novel and a poem, yet somehow more than either form." Here's the short book description from Amazon:
Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.
A Heart so White - Javier Marias - $13.43
Javier Marias is a Spanish author and has won the IMPAC Dublin Award. The Drunken Boxwallas say the book is "an engaging and unique perspective on marriage and love." Here's the short book description from Amazon:
Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy--its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility--hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows and onto the costs of ambivalence.
A True Novel - Minas Mizumura - $21.55
Minae Mizumura is a Japanese writer, and the Drunken Boxwallas say "She is a scrupulous observer of life as it passes the characters in her book, often jolting us with casually strewn sentences filled with profound yet surprising truths." This is a reworking of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Here's the short book description from Amazon:
A True Novel begins in New York in the 1960s, where we meet Taro, a relentlessly ambitious Japanese immigrant trying to make his fortune. Flashbacks and multilayered stories reveal his life: an impoverished upbringing as an orphan, his eventual rise to wealth and success—despite racial and class prejudice—and an obsession with a girl from an affluent family that has haunted him all his life. A True Novel then widens into an examination of Japan’s westernization and the emergence of a middle class.
Verdict: This is my first BoxWalla Book box, and I really enjoyed it! I obviously haven't had time to read all of the books yet, so time will tell if I enjoy the books themselves (they have excellent reviews, so I'm sure I will!), but I think the curation around love for February was great.
All three of the books included feel like something a friend would have recommended to me to read, and the notebook is great for jotting down notes while reading, or as the Drunken BoxWallas suggest, jotting down a little poetry of your own!
My calculated value of the box is $53.76, which exceeds the cost. I am happy with that value, as I know there was a lot of thoughtful curation involved, and shipping books isn't cheap.
What do you think of BoxWalla's Book box? I think I'm going to enjoy this one immensely!
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