Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory.

The book is being released by Berkley on January 30, 2018.

Amazon says this about the book: A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in this fun and flirty debut novel.

Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist.

On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend...

After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other...

They're just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century--or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want...

Monday, January 22, 2018

Review: The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

There are so many WWII novels out there and so many being released all the time, that it seems as if there's no possible way that every aspect of the war hasn't already been covered and mined for stories. But then comes a novel like Jessica Shattuck's The Women in the Castle, where the focus is not only on the women and children left behind when the men fight the war but more specifically on the widows and children of a small portion of the conspirators who came so very close to assassinating Hitler that July of 1944 in Operation Valkyrie after the war is over.  With this novel, another aspect of the war and life after it comes a little bit more into focus.

Opening with the incongruity of a lavish party held at Burg Lingenfels, an impressive but crumbling castle in Bavaria, on the evening of what would come to be known as Kristallnacht, when Marianne von Lingenfels goes looking for her husband and her old friend, both missing from the party, she hears of the night's atrocities and the men's growing suspicion that assassinating Hitler is the only solution open to the resistance. And it is that night that, despite taking offence at the seemingly offhand and unimportant title of Commander of Wives and Children, laughingly bestowed on her by her husband, Marianne promises her best friend she will take care of his young fiance and their unborn child, come what may. After the war is over, Marianne works to honor her promise, finding six year old Martin in a children's re-education home and his mother Benita being used by the Russians in Berlin and takes the two of them to Burg Lingenfels where her own children are living. Eventually she finds another resister's widow, Ania, and her two children at a displaced persons camp and brings them to the castle as well. Life is not easy for anyone post-war and definitely not for the three women with their very different personalities and their secrets from each other. As the full truth of the Nazis' monstrousness comes out, Marianne, uncompromising and morally absolute, leans on the rightness of her husband and his friends' cause, even if they failed in the execution. Benita, pretty and young and sheltered from any knowledge of the work her husband was doing, just wants to move forward, to forget the past and make a new life with her precious son. Pragmatic Ania stays mostly quiet on the past, focused on day to day survival, unwilling to stir up the ghosts who always hover just over her shoulder.

The women are very different, having different backgrounds and personalities, their only obvious commonality that of their husbands' participation in the attempt on Hitler. The narrative time line jumps back and forth from each woman's past to her life as it unfolds after the war in the company of the other two and the narrative focus also moves back and forth amongst the women as they grapple with what a life moving forward will look like. The differences in the women stand in for the larger idea of how to remember, honor, and mourn but also go forth and embrace the future. Can we forgive? Should we? What would either of those look like? And who decides which of these options is the right one? All of the women are pretty set in their individual characterizations and the conflicts that result are realistic and nuanced. The relationships between the women are tested and forged in shared hardship and these alliances are heavyweights, uneasy, and breakable, so very different from many tales of women's relationship. The jumping narrative and the dominant characterizations of the women might make this a harder read for some but those looking for a differently focused book set mostly in the aftermath of the war will find this novel of moral obligation, remembrance, guilt, betrayal, and rebuilding something worth reading.

For more information about Jessica Shattuck and the book, check out her website or like her on Facebook. Check out the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.
Thanks to Harper Collins and Trish from TLC Book Tours for inspiring me to pull this off my shelf sooner rather than later.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The Most Dangerous Duke in London by Madeline Hunter
The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
The Hunting Accident by David L. Carlson and Landis Blair
Who Is Rich? by Matthew Klam

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
This Far Isn't Far Enough by Lynn Sloan
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Paper Boats by Dee Lestari

Reviews posted this week:

nothing

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The Most Dangerous Duke in London by Madeline Hunter
The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
The Hunting Accident by David L. Carlson and Landis Blair
Who Is Rich? by Matthew Klam

Monday Mailbox

This past two week's mailbox arrivals:

The Story of Our Lives by Helen Warner came from Graydon House and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

Three best friends who support each other through everything might have their friendship destroyed by a long dormant secret. Sounds juicy, no?

The Hounds of Spring by Lucy Andrews Cummins came from Leapfolio and LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

The story of a woman who has given up her PhD in literature for dog walking while she figures out what she really wants in life, this sounds like a fun and quirky read, especially for anyone who has gone to grad school for literature and I can't wait to read it.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes.

The book is being released by Minotaur Books on January 23, 2018.

Amazon says this about the book: Set amid the legendary Mitford household, a thrilling Golden Age-style mystery, based on a real unsolved murder, by Jessica Fellowes, author of the New York Times bestselling Downton Abbey books.

It's 1920, and Louisa Cannon dreams of escaping her life of poverty in London.

Louisa's salvation is a position within the Mitford household at Asthall Manor, in the Oxfordshire countryside. There she will become nursemaid, chaperone and confidante to the Mitford sisters, especially sixteen-year-old Nancy, an acerbic, bright young woman in love with stories.

But then a nurse―Florence Nightingale Shore, goddaughter of her famous namesake―is killed on a train in broad daylight, and Louisa and Nancy find themselves entangled in the crimes of a murderer who will do anything to hide their secret...

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Carnegie's Maid by Marie Benedict.

The book is being released by Sourcebooks Landmark on January 16, 2018.

Amazon says this about the book: From the author of The Other Einstein, the mesmerizing tale of what kind of woman could have inspired an American dynasty.

Clara Kelley is not who they think she is. She's not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's daughter with nowhere to go and nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, and pretending to be her just might get Clara some money to send back home.

If she can keep up the ruse, that is. Serving as a lady's maid in the household of Andrew Carnegie requires skills he doesn't have, answering to an icy mistress who rules her sons and her domain with an iron fist. What Clara does have is a resolve as strong as the steel Pittsburgh is becoming famous for, coupled with an uncanny understanding of business, and Andrew begins to rely on her. But Clara can't let her guard down, not even when Andrew becomes something more than an employer. Revealing her past might ruin her future -- and her family's.

With captivating insight and heart, Carnegie's Maid tells the story of one brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie's transformation from ruthless industrialist into the world's first true philanthropist.

Monday, January 8, 2018

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Reluctant Cannibals by Ian Flitcroft
Word of Mouse by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein
Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
This Far Isn't Far Enough by Lynn Sloan
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Reviews posted this week:

The Crown Derby Plate by Marjorie Bowen
The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian
The Reluctant Cannibals by Ian Flitcroft
Word of Mouse by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein
Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

no 2018 books yet!

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Review: Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

Family togetherness can be both a blessing and a curse. Once children are grown, families tend to gather together less and less and often only around the holidays. If you've just been with family at the holidays, you know how hard it can be to be under one roof together for an extended period of time. Now just imagine of you weren't just together but that you were quarantined so there was definitely no way to escape your loved ones, no popping out to grocery shop, no walk down the street, no outside contact at all. This is the situation in Francesca Hornak's novel Seven Days of Us.

The Birch family is about to spend seven days together in quarantine over Christmas. Eldest daughter Olivia is a doctor just returning to Britain after spending time in Liberia treating victims of the deadly Haag virus. She has to stay locked up for the seven day viral incubation period in case she comes down with the terrifying disease. Despite not returning home for the past several years for Christmas, this year Olivia will have more than enough time with her parents and her younger sister at their country place, Weyfield Hall in Norfolk, beyond the reach of good cell service and reliable wi-fi. Mother Emma has just been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma but she's keeping her diagnosis a secret, worried that Olivia won't come home if she knows what a danger her presence could be. Instead she's invested in being the cheerful, nothing's wrong, martyr mum as she caters to her family, trying to keep all their traditions alive, even if no one else cares much about them anymore. Father Andrew is snarky and emotionally distant. He's a former war correspondent turned unhappy food critic who is more than uncommonly unkind in his reviews. He's also harboring a secret this holiday season, having gotten two emails from a young American man named Jesse who is the product of a one night stand Andrew had in Beirut before he and Emma married. This heretofore unknown son wants to meet Andrew but Andrew's best defense against Jesse is to ignore the emails and definitely not tell his wife and daughters about them. Youngest daughter Phoebe is used to being the center of attention. She's the golden child. She's also self-absorbed, frivolous, and shallow and she's just gotten engaged to her long time boyfriend, who is a complete and total wanker. She's more consumed with planning her wedding and whether or not George got her the right earrings for Christmas than anything else (except maybe lording her most favored child status over Olivia) but under all of this bratty self-centeredness, she has a lingering sense that her relationship is not all it could or should be. Olivia should be the heroic figure, the doctor who risks her life treating others, but she's so condescending and intolerant of her family's affluence and traditions that she comes across as judgmental and sanctimonious. Like the others, she too is hiding something this Christmas. She's fallen in love with a fellow doctor and the two of them broke the strict "No Touch" rule they lived under in Liberia, a fact that she is at great pains to hide, especially once Sean is diagnosed with Haag himself and is splashed all over the media.

Just the secrets and lack of communication between the Birches, never mind their divergent personalities, means that spending seven days together with no respite will not be easy. This enforced family togetherness will challenge them, exposing the cracks in their relationships with each other, highlighting how little they share anymore, and showing how much they still have the capacity to hurt each other. But it turns out that it won't just be the four of them together as two other people show up unexpectedly and are forced to join in the quarantine, complicating the dysfunctional family dynamic even further and stressing things to the breaking point.

The novel is told in sections detailing each day of the quarantine and then subdivided into short chapters focused on each of the major characters in turn. As the days pass, the reader can see the frustrations rise, the lack of communication grow, and each character become more purely and stubbornly him or herself. The narrative starts off with some pretty huge, rather unbelievable coincidences but Hornak actually makes them work far better and less predictably than might have been expected. These coincidences don't stop as the story goes on, but by then the reader is invested enough in the outcome that it no longer matters. The characters mostly all start off as not very likable and while they don't change out of all recognition, each of them learns and grows and becomes a little more sympathetic during the seven days they spend together. The end of the novel could very well descend into a treacly disaster of a Christmas story and it is greatly to Hornak's credit that it doesn't, instead striking just the right note for both satisfaction and believability. A generally enjoyable read, this will make you cringe and laugh as you contemplate your own family quirks and conflicts and you'll find yourself grateful that you aren't likely to be (figuratively) locked up with them again until next Christmas.

Sunday Salon: Tops of 2017

I hate to create my "best of" list before the year is well and truly over in hopes that I will read an amazing book in the waning hour of the year. So even though 2017 ended last Sunday, I had high hopes for my last reads of the year and held off declaring my favorite reads. But the year is well and truly over now so the list is complete. My sole criterion for making the list (besides being a fantastic read) is that I read the book in 2017, no matter the publication date. I used to try and keep it to ten books but I had too many this year so I cheated by doing a baker's dozen of fiction and have other best of types so I can squeeze in even more. ;-) If you'd like me to review one of the unreviewed books on here, just let me know and I'll try to get right to it.

A baker's dozen of top fiction:
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
The Chilbury Ladies' Choir by Jennifer Ryan
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen Flynn
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
Nuclear Family by Susanna Fogel
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Sourdough by Robin Sloan
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian

Best short stories:
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies

Best memoir:
Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly

Best essay collection:
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe

Best mystery:
The Girl with the Kaleidoscope Eyes by David Handler


Did you read any of these this past year? What does your top of the top list look like?

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Review: Word of Mouse by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein

I rarely read middle grade books, especially now that there are no middle grade readers in my house. But every now and again one crosses my path that looks too cute to pass up. Patterson and Grabenstein's pun-tacularly titled Word of Mouse is one of those.

Isaiah is a mouse. But he's not just any mouse, he's a very special mouse. Together with his ninety-six siblings, he lives in a lab and has clearly been modified to be a rather spectacular specimen of mousehood, even if he is the smallest and youngest of his mischief (the name for a group or family of mice). He can read and communicate via computer. He can say a few words, very quietly, and he can mimic other animals. Oh, and he's blue. His fur is blue, one of the only colors mice can actually see. One day with his siblings, he breaks out of the lab but it turns out he's the only one who isn't immediately recaptured and returned. This is hard because he's not a very brave mouse and he's all alone as he navigates the suburbs, birds, cats, and humans out to get him. But when he meets a pretty girl mouse who sings, even though only boy mice are supposed to be able to sing, he learns that being brave isn't about never feeling fear, that family has always got your back, and that being different isn't a bad thing. With his newfound bravery and the help of his friends and family, he determines to rescue his siblings from the evil lab.

This was in fact a cute book about embracing difference and taking chances. Its unusual mouse main character, who narrates his own tale, is sweet if occasionally a little overt in imparting the lessons he's learning. There are inconsistencies in what Isaiah, who has never been outside the lab before, knows and doesn't know thanks to his laboratory upbringing but these can mostly be ignored to go with the story flow. Complimenting the text, Isaiah's exploits are rendered beautifully in drawings by Joe Sutphin and his narrow escapes, in paragraph and picture will surely delight middle grade readers who will also happily absorb the moral of the story: "We're all different. It's the only thing we have in common."

Friday, January 5, 2018

Review: The Reluctant Cannibals by Ian Flitcroft

I hadn't even finished reading out the back cover copy for this book before members of my book club were shaking their heads vehemently and saying no and nope as fast as they could. Interestingly, their reactions mirror the reactions of the characters in the book when the word cannibalism (sorry, it's anthropophagy according to the character suggesting it because that somehow makes the concept more palatable--snort!) is first brought up. All I have to say is that it was their loss since this was a slyly funny and highly entertaining read about morality and taboo set in the normally staid, hidebound world of academia.

It's 1969 in Oxford. St. Jerome's College is the epitome of the hallowed halls of learning, with a gatekeeper who regularly yells at students to keep off the grass, gowned faculty and students, tutorials, crews of eight, and so on. Intriguingly, St. Jerome's is also the site of a secret dining society, the Shadow Faculty of Gastronomic Science, and one of the gastronomically adventurous dinners they throw is going to bring them some rather unwanted attention. Japanese diplomat, Takeshi Tokoro, the guest of one of the shadow faculty members prepares the potentially deadly delicacy of fugu for the assembled company. An incorrect preparation means death. And Tokoro does indeed do one small thing that ensures his own death right at the table. Now this group of six gourmands, all members of the faculty and staff of St. Jerome's, is garnering attention and threatened with forced disbanding. First, the vice-chancellor, a veritable stick in the mud whose taste buds run to bland nursery food, gets the group in his sights for causing him to have to hush up an international debacle that could have cause the college's reputation grave harm. Then a snobbish undergraduate whose opinion of his own importance is excessive, the Honorable Matthew Kingsley-Hampton, takes offense that he has not been invited to join this secret society (assuming incorrectly that it's made up off fellow undergraduates like himself) and so determines to expose the society, but mostly through manipulating others around him to do his dirty work.

The best thing to do given the climate at the school would be for the shadow faculty to either skip one of their scheduled end of term meals or at least not court controversy in any way. But Professor Arthur Plantagenet, one of the founding members of the group, an eccentric, and lifelong food and wine enthusiast, discovers that his unbridled appetites have left his heart failing and his time on earth much shorter than anticipated. Rather than fighting fate, he devises a plan for his remaining time and for what to do with his remains after death and his plan will embroil the shadow faculty in a situation the likes of which they've never before faced. He is going to donate a piece of himself for consumption at one of the shadow faculty's culinary adventures, looking on this as a scientific donation to determine not only what people taste like but if he tastes better than the animals we do eat. The others are horrified and when the time comes, as executors of the good professor's will, they will face moral, legal, and ethical dilemmas as they contemplate the horror (or is it intrigue?) of eating their late colleague.

Flitcroft has managed to write a hilarious novel about one of the biggest taboos in our society. The characters are wonderful, from the pragmatic Augustus Bloom to the spiritually agonizing chaplain Charles Pinker, from the unpleasant bully Matthew Kingsley-Hampton to his meek and downtrodden roommate Patrick Eccles. The novel feels madcap and somehow filled with hijinks even though it really isn't. The shadow faculty can be pretentious in their gustatory delights and pompous opinions but they are also endearing and the reader enjoys spending time with them as they go into raptures at their over the top dinners and as they spar with each other over the subject of eating Arthur's left thigh. Sounds wonderful and crazy, right? It is. This novel has it all: decadent, mouth-wateringly described feasts, a ghost or two in the wine cellar, undergraduate shenanigans, a moral and ethical dilemma, a wet blanket of an administrator, a secret society with declining membership, and plenty of gallows humor. Clever, funny, and original, after reading this rollicking tale I might be a bit wary of eating anything with Flitcroft but I'll happily read more of his work.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Windy City Magic: The Best Kind of Magic by Crystal Cestari.

The book is being released by Disney Hyperion on January 9, 2018.

Amazon says this about the book: Amber Sand is not a witch. The Sand family magical gene somehow leapfrogged over her. But she did get one highly specific bewitching talent: she can see true love. As a matchmaker, Amber's pretty far down the sorcery food chain (even birthday party magicians rank higher), but after five seconds of eye contact, she can envision anyone's soul mate.

Amber works at her mother's magic shop-Windy City Magic-in downtown Chicago, and she's confident she's seen every kind of happy ending there is: except for one-her own. (The Fates are tricky jerks that way.) So when Charlie Blitzman, the mayor's son and most-desired boy in school, comes to her for help finding his father's missing girlfriend, she's distressed to find herself falling for him. Because while she can't see her own match, she can see his--and it's not Amber. How can she, an honest peddler of true love, pursue a boy she knows full well isn't her match?

The Best Kind of Magic is set in urban Chicago and will appeal to readers who long for magic in the real world. With a sharp-witted and sassy heroine, a quirky cast of mystical beings, and a heady dose of adventure, this novel will have you laughing out loud and questioning your belief in happy endings.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Review: The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian

Very often we tend to infantilize the elderly. We say old people are in a second childhood and act as if they need to be protected from themselves and all the things that can go wrong to and for them. Most often we do this out of a sense of love. We want them to be safe and cared for but we are undeniably taking away much of their own agency, discounting their knowledge and wishes. Don't get me wrong, sometimes the decisions we make on behalf of the frail and elderly in our lives are the only ones we can possibly make. But we also have to consider their situations and think long and hard before we deny them the pleasures that make life worth sticking around for. Getting old doesn't automatically equal incompetence and sometimes death, the scary outcome we try so hard to deny both for ourselves and on behalf of those we love, is a risk worth taking if we get to live more along the way. Michael Zadoorian truly gets this, as evidenced by his funny, entertaining, and poignant novel, The Leisure Seeker, coming out this month as a movie starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland.

Ella and John Robina are in their eighties. They've been married for 60 some odd years and they've had a full life together. Now Ella has terminal breast cancer and John has Alzheimer's. Ella is failing physically and John is failing mentally but they want to make one last trip together. Well, Ella wants one last trip and John is amenable to suggestion even though the Robina's children and their doctors are against it. These two old codgers sneak off in their '78 Leisure Seeker, determined to follow Route 66 from their home in Detroit to Disneyland one last time, escaping the futile medical treatments and unwelcome opinions of those who want to choose how they spend their final days or years.

Ella is hilarious, acerbic and witty; she's the brains of the operation. John might only have very sporadic flashes of memory but he can still drive and he's happy to be directed by Ella; he's the brawn. As these two travel across Route 66, they are traveling back into their history together, watching slides each evening as they camp and talking through their long life (or at least Ella is even when John can't), but they are also enjoying their life right now. Sure, Ella has to pop little blue "discomfort" pills and John doesn't often know where he is or who the people Ella is talking about are, but their love for each other and all of its attendant joy and frustration continues to shine through the novel. They have some crazy escapades on their road trip and they do some perfectly banal things as well but in both cases, the reader is happy to travel along with them.

There is both regular humor and black humor galore here leavening the fact that Ella and John are making it clear that aging isn't for sissies. Ella's first person narrative voice is honest and straightforward and the story itself is touching. Zadoorian has a great eye for detail (as in the description of the 70's decor of the camper) as well as a deep understanding of his characters and the curve balls that they've been thrown in these, their twilight years. His depiction of a man with Alzheimer's is heartbreaking and true but he refrains from wallowing in the sadness of John's loss by celebrating the moments when John's memory sparks and showing the simple joy Ella feels in those fleeting moments. His portrayal of Ella is equally well done, her stubbornness and determination, her refusal to consider ridiculous treatments in the face of her real prognosis, and her deep loyalty to her husband. The book doesn't flinch from the realities and indignities of aging and disease but it also celebrates life for as long as there's life left in the old geezers. Although the story could be depressing, it is in fact the exact opposite. It's life affirming and highly entertaining in spite of the omnipresent shadow of mortality. The end is perfect; it could not be any other way. This novel is both laughter and tears, light and dark. In a nutshell, that's life.

The movie has clearly been changed a bit from the book but in the ways that matter, it looks as if it will be true to the story and I am looking forward to seeing it. It releases on January 19th but in the meantime, you can view the trailer on YouTube here or watch below.


For more information about Michael Zadoorian and the book, check out his website, like the book on Facebook, or follow Zadoorian on Twitter. Check out the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.
Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and Harper Collins for inspiring me to pull this off my shelf sooner rather than later.

Monday, January 1, 2018

Review: The Crown Derby Plate by Marjorie Bowen

I had no idea that there was once a Victorian tradition of reading a ghost story on Christmas. Without doing any research at all into the matter, I suspect that this tradition may be at least one of the sources of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. But other than that famous story of a haunting, I had never before come across a tale that might have been a part of that tradition until I was sent this short tale. Of course, that could also be because ghost stories generally fall outside the realm of my usual reading choices.

Miss Pym bought an almost complete set of Crown Derby china several years at a local estate sale and she's always wanted to have the full set. After all, she's only missing one plate. Back in the neighborhood for the holidays, she determines to see if the missing plate has been found. But when she heads off to the purportedly haunted neighbor's house in the drear of winter in hopes of completing her set, she has no idea of what she'll encounter. Her journey is strangely disconcerting and the neighbor, who she hasn't met before, is decidedly queer. Her unease grows and when she finally leaves the cold and oddly smelling estate, she makes an unsettling discovery about her visit and what she encountered there.

This vintage story is a very brief one and not surprising at all; the conclusion being obvious long before the reader gets to the final pages. The feel of the writing is very much reflects the Victorian interest in all things ghost and death despite the story not being particularly chilling. I was very definitely not the reader for this tale, feeling nothing so much as baffled by the draw of the story when I finished it. Put in context of the time it was written in, I can appreciate it for its place in historic literary trends if not nearly as much for its plot.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date. It is still chaos here but because of the looming New Year (Happpy 2018 to all of you!), I tried to finish up a few of the books that have languished on my bedside table for a good long time. Managed to do that but no reviewing as I am still having to try and beat back the worst of the construction dust and debris on a daily basis. Hopefully things will start getting back to normal soon!!! And as is usual, I will refrain from listing last year's unreviewed books anymore, even as I do still hope to go back and get to reviewing them at some point.

Books I completed this past week are:

Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan
The Lake House by Kate Morton
The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors

Reviews posted this week:

nothing

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

nothing for 2018 yet!

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrival:

My Ex-Life by Stephen McCauley came from Flatiron Books.

A college counselor in San Francisco whose boyfriend has left him and whose amazing apartment is being sold out from under him, a woman whose husband has left her for a younger woman and whose daughter refuses to apply to college, these two have an old history with each other and their current untenable lives will bring them back together to face their past. Really you should read the jacket copy because I haven't made it sound nearly as enticing as it strikes me. And it does strike me as a fantastic read!

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

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