Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrival:

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones came from Algonquin and LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Jones' Silver Sparrow was a beautiful book so I'm looking forward to this novel about a newly married couple whose lives are torn apart by a wrongful conviction that takes years to be overturned.

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.

Sunday Salon: Snapshots from a childhood in books

Recently I was asked to provide the title of a "lifetime" book that had the greatest impact on me and a brief explanation of that impact. Now if you're a lifetime reader, and I assume that most of you are, the list of books that you could use for this is not a short one. So the question then becomes, which one to use. Will you be judged for answering with less than an acknowledged classic? When I was in graduate school, a well-known professor asked each of us to tell the class about a book that had made us a reader. (Notice she didn't say "the" book, but "a" book. She was clearly a reader herself.) When it was my turn and I said that James A. Michener's Hawaii was a seminal work in my reading life, it was hard not to notice all of the (barely disguised) snorts of derision. And yes, it was clearly different than the rest of the canonical (and the more obtuse and confounding the better) works everyone else had cited but it was in fact a major influence on my reading. Should I have lied?* Even then I knew I shouldn't. Everyone has books, high brow and low that have shaped them but the impulse is surely to always go with the high brow, right? If you can overcome that gut reaction (and maybe you choose a high brow work anyway because it feels right to you), which part of your life should the book come from? Is there one that had a slightly bigger impact than the others on the list? Should you just choose the book whose impact you can most easily articulate? I considered many. Here are just a small sampling.

The Berenstain's B Book by Stan and Jan Berenstain was the first book I ever read by myself. I still remember the feeling of exhilaration of knowing I'd read it myself, running down to tell my mom, who was on the phone in the kitchen (I can still see her twirling the phone cord as she chatted to whomever was on the other end of the line), and insisting on reading it to her right that very moment. Even at that young age, I knew I had unlocked something special.

Socks by Beverly Cleary was the book I checked out of the school library again and again. Despite the fact that this was classed as a "third grade" book, I, a mere kindergartner, had special permission to check it out. I loved this story of the grey kitten with white socks so much I don't know if anyone else ever got the chance to check that book out that year. I can still see the cover of this much loved tale (which doesn't match anything I can find online, interestingly enough) and I wish there was a way for me to get my hands on the certainly long since destroyed library due date check out card I signed over and over again that year.

One of the oldest books I have on my shelf is Jane Eyre. I don't mean oldest in terms of first edition or publishing date but just in terms of which book I personally have owned the longest. My copy came from Scholastic books when I was in elementary school. And no, it's not an abridged version. I adored getting the newsletters that came home from school every month and I went through my copy very carefully, circling the books I really wanted. My parents were always very generous with books but even they had to draw the line somewhere and I remember being told that I had to narrow my choices down; I might or might not have circled close to everything in those pages. It was hard to do but obviously Jane Eyre made my final cut. I loved the book but I think I ordered it as much because it was long as for the story. (Side note: I loved the Scholastic newsletters when my kids were of an age to get them too and ordered not only what they were interested in but books I thought they should want to read because I would have wanted to read them if they existed when I was their ages.)

Like so many girls my age, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume was a revelation and as an adult, I wish I had never done those "I must, I must, I must increase my bust" exercises (if you read it, you know what I'm talking about). But what I remember most is not its matter of fact handling of puberty and the emotional aspect of it that felt so very universal, but instead I remember talking about the book with my best friend Jenni, who lived two doors down. I'm pretty sure we were discussing it in lowered voices (who knows why, as it wasn't a patch on Forever, which I read not long afterwards, for forbidden topics) when my younger sister, clearly overhearing us, wanted to know what a period was. I told her to go ask mom, never dreaming that she'd ask my mother such an embarrassing question. This was probably the last time I underestimated my sister.  Her question earned me an our bodies ourselves talk about puberty and getting your period from my mother. Thank heavens mom (and Suzanne) never knew about Forever!

The World According to Garp by John Irving is the only book I ever hid from my parents. It was on their bookshelves and I have no idea exactly how I came across it since there was no dust jacket to tease me with the contents. (My dad has a thing about using the dust jacket as a bookmark and then throwing it away when he's finished with the book. Please direct all horrified hate mail his way and not to me as I already know this is a heinous crime against literature.) I don't remember how old I was but since I remember the room I read it in, I had to be somewhere between 9 and 14 when I read it. My mom did discover me reading it one day and took it away, replacing it with Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, and telling me that I was a little young for Garp. Since she just put it back on the shelf, I just took up reading it where I'd left off whenever I was home alone. (Sorry mom!) Maybe they were right to think I was too young to read it because to this day, more than a few decades since, I remember the sexy bits quite clearly.

But which book did I actually choose to highlight as the book that had a lifetime impact on me? Well, it was Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman. I pulled this off the shelf at my grandparents' house when I was probably a pre-teen and once I finished it, I sat up late into the night for weeks and not only imagined myself as the main character, sobbing at all the tragedy in my imagined life, but I kept the story going in my head long past what the authors had written. I've never actually been brave enough to read the sequel that was written not too many years ago because I still cherish the memory of my childhood visceral response so much.

Everyone should have these books, or ones like them in their lives. What books made you the reader you are?



*For those who need to know if the professor was one of those snorting with derision, she was not. In fact, she lectured the class on snobbery and informed everyone that it was best sellers like this that made it possible for other, less commercially viable, books to be published. She also mentioned that Michener himself funded a poetry prize that wouldn't have been possible if his books hadn't been wildly popular. I did not know this when I offered up Hawaii but it made me happy and my fellow students were properly chagrined at the news.

Review: The Paris Secret by Karen Swan

When it came out in the news a couple of years ago that there was a perfectly preserved apartment in Paris that had been closed up and untouched since WWII, it was such an intriguing piece of news. Why would someone walk away from their apartment, never to return? What was in this unexpected time capsule? Were the people dead and gone, victims of the war? Were they still alive but unable to face the memories of the place? The truth could have been anything. The romance of it was in imagining the story behind all of it. If in fact, the real story did come out, it wasn't covered in the news anywhere near as completely as the discovery itself was. Karen Swan imagined her own back story for an apartment like this, complete with a fabulously wealthy family, war crimes, amazing art treasures, and closely held secrets in her newest novel, The Paris Secret.

When the Vermeils, a wealthy and high profile French family, discover that they own an apartment in Paris that hasn't been opened since 1943, they call in a discreet fine arts agency to examine, catalog, and potentially sell whatever might be inside. A codicil to Mr. Vermeil's late father's will forbids Jacques and his wife from going into the apartment themselves until after both the late Francois' and his still very much alive wife's deaths. Flora Sykes is the fine arts agent assigned to the strange and intriguing find, made even more exciting when the apartment turns out to be filled with valuable art. It falls to Flora to trace the provenance on everything they discover, including a long lost Renoir and smaller pieces by other famous artists. As Flora chases down the history of the pieces, she is also dealing with a devastating family situation at home in England. The urgency and discretion required by both situations are overwhelming; luckily Flora is a professional. Although she cannot or will not share everything that is going on in her life, she does have some good friends in Paris to lean on for support. They come in particularly handy when she clashes repeatedly with the spoiled, angry, obnoxious, and badly behaved in every sense of the word, adult children of Jacques and Lilian, Xavier and Natascha. But if playboy, partier Xavier is truly so unpleasant, why is Flora so pulled to him?

Of course, the family is, or should be, of little consequence to her; she is working on the amazing art. Unfortunately she can get no further on the provenance of the art treasures than that they were last known to be sold to a notorious Nazi collaborator, a fact that renders them close to worthless despite their authenticity. Dogged in her determination to find the proof that the Vermeil family came to own these pieces honestly and not simply because desperate Jewish families sold the only things they had of any worth in an attempt to escape Hitler's genocide, Flora digs deep, uncovering secrets that the will's codicil was meant to forever hide, changing and then changing again the Vermeil family's knowledge of itself.

Anyone who knows the art world will immediately see the difficulty in finding a long abandoned stash of valuable art in Europe and have certain expectations regarding the plot of the novel. Swan has done a good job leading even the non-art savvy to the same conclusions and then to twist the plot a hair's breadth, writing a very different story than the one the reader expects. But that's not the end of her slight of hand as she is clearly a master of the unexpected. The family crisis that consumes Flora is very slowly revealed and its importance seems to be only in adding to Flora's stress level until it too is takes on rather more weight in the narrative. While Flora is well fleshed out, some of her motivations or actions are given a tad bit of a short shrift, and despite being an expert at her job and therefore used to dealing with impossibly large sums of money and the people who have it, she is strangely uncertain and occasionally even timid in most of the dealings highlighted in the book. The secondary characters do change the direction of the plot on several occasions but, for the most part, they remain fairly unrealized beyond these plot diversionary roles. The romantic connection is background rather than the main focus of the novel although it grows in importance as the story progresses. There are a few hiccups in the plot such as why, if the family has never stepped foot in the apartment or have any knowledge of what's inside, do they immediately call a fine arts dealer to inventory the contents and why is it so easy for serious and real trust issues to be overcome in the end (over a mere half page) simply by declaring "love"? Over all though, this is an engaging imagining of the story behind an abandoned apartment and an interesting look into the world of fine art and the detective work required to verify and trace it. Readers who love uncovering deeply buried secrets, those who want a small glimpse into the rarefied world of the super rich, and those with an interest in art will find this a worthwhile read.

For more information about Karen Swan and the book, check out her publisher author page or like her on Facebook or 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 sending me a copy of this book to review.

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.

Left to Chance by Amy Sue Nathan.

The book is being released by St. Martin's Griffin on November 21, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: No one knows why Teddi Lerner left her hometown, but everyone knows why she’s back.

Twelve-year-old Shayna― talented, persistent, and adorable―persuaded "Aunt Tee" to return to Chance, Ohio, to photograph her father’s wedding. Even though it's been six years since Shay's mother, Celia, died, Teddi can hardly bear the thought of her best friend's husband marrying someone else. But Teddi’s bond with Shay is stronger than the hurt.

Teddi knows it’s time to face the consequences of her hasty retreat from family, friends, and, her old flame, but when she looks through her viewfinder, nothing in her small town looks the same. That’s when she truly sees the hurt she's caused and―maybe―how to fix it.

After the man she once loved accuses Teddi of forgetting Celia, Teddi finally admits why she ran away, and the guilt she’s carried with her. As Teddi relinquishes the distance that kept her safe, she’ll discover surprising truths about the people she left behind, and herself. And she'll finally see what she overlooked all along.

Review: Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning

After I blazed through the Outlander quartet twenty years ago (and yes, I know there are 4 more than that now as well as another two planned), I added a lot of Scotland set books to my collection. In fact, I probably added Karen Marie Moning's The Kiss of the Highlander specifically because the jacket copy on my mass market paperback sounds an awful lot like Outlander. There's time travel and romance and danger, a more modern heroine and an historical hero. In fact, while these elements are all there, this is a significantly different book than Outlander, more firmly in the romance genre and with the addition of magic and druids.

Gwen Cassidy's life is pretty dull. She works for an insurance company processing claims and she has no personal life to speak of. The tour around Scotland that she's signed up for is populated by senior citizens instead of potential love interests. She's never going to lose her virginity at this rate. When she heads into the Highland hills to have some time to be alone and think, she ends up falling into a hidden cave, landing smack dab on top of a braw, sleeping Highlander. When Drustan awakens, he tells her that he is The MacKeltar, that he's from 500 years in the past, and that he needs to get back to his own century to save his clan. She thinks it's possible he's a mental patient but she agrees to help him get back to his castle, thinking that she can then give over care of this strange but compelling man to his family. As she sees his reaction to the 20th century along the way to his castle, she starts to wonder if he is indeed telling the truth and, of course, to fall for him as he is falling for her in return.  When she sees who he really is and what he is capable of, history, the present, and everything around them will change for the two of them.

Gwen as the heroine is an interesting character. She is incredibly smart (a gifted physicist) but she's also rather pitiful and not great interpersonally thanks to her late, unfeeling parents who only valued her for her potential contributions to science. Drustan is very much a stereotypical sixteenth century hero. He's ridiculously chauvinistic, even when at the mercy of Gwen's time period and her continued goodwill. Of course, he is also chiseled and delicious looking so despite his overbearing high-handedness, Gwen's hormones cannot wait to tango with him. Her intelligence challenges him, something that he quickly learns to appreciate in the present day but that his past persona really struggles with, keeping them apart despite their white hot lust for each other. The plot is quite involved given the time travel aspect but everything is explained quite well and easily enough so that each part of the story is as believable as something predicated on magic and time travel can be. The ending was amazing and incredibly inventive and although there are more books in the series (and three prior to this one as well), this felt complete in its primary plot line. If you are a historical romance reader, a fan of sexy time travel, want to read an inversion of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, or just like the idea of a man in a plaid, this will absolutely be your guilty pleasure and I'm happy to say that although this was published in 2001, it holds up just fine in 2017.

Review: Royally Wed by Teri Wilson

I was 10 when Charles and Diana married in what was billed as a fairy tale wedding. We were awake at a ridiculous hour gathered around a television set holding plates from high tea in our laps as we watched the prince marry his princess. Leaving aside that this was real life and not a fairy tale, as future years would surely prove, it was a magical event and one I remember fondly. Thirty years later, while wearing a plastic tiara and noshing on delicate British snacks, I sat with friends and watched William and Catherine marry. Another stately, beautiful, and yes, magical royal wedding. Although I was in good company for both of these events, I do admit that even on a regular day, I have a bit of a soft spot for the British royals so I was more than happy to get my hands on Teri Wilson's Royally Wed, a short contemporary romance about a royal wedding, a princess, a Duke who may be hiding something, a gorgeous American, blackmail, and infidelity.

Asher Reed is having a bit of a rough time of it. A professional cellist, he has been invited to play a difficult solo at the wedding of the century after Yo-Yo Ma falls ill and has to cancel. The problem is that as a last minute substitution, he has no hotel room and hasn't practiced at all. The Queen installs him in Buckingham Palace, in The Blue Room, a room in Princess Amelia's suite of rooms and he is given access to St. Paul's after hours his first evening in London. He is affected by the gorgeous cathedral and the famous buried there, playing a hauntingly beautiful piece. It's the first piece he's played since his former fiancee dumped him for his mentor and Maestro.  That both his former fiancee and his Maestro are also in London to perform for the wedding is not making things easy for him.  Princess Amelia is also in St. Paul's, weeping over her upcoming marriage, not exactly the picture of a bride in love and eager for her wedding. And she's not that bride; this wedding is an arranged one to the father of Amelia's best friend. She isn't overjoyed to be marrying Duke Holden but she is trying desperately to live down the nickname of Princess Naughty and do what her family needs her to do. But she and Asher have an instant attraction and their close proximity and an incorrigible corgi named Willow conspire to throw them together, fanning the flames of desire in the mere 10 days before the wedding.

While this is the third book in the series, it easily stands on its own. Princess Amelia is both a sad and an appealing main character. She is clearly torn between her duty to her family and what she really wants, even before Asher enters the picture. For having a reputation as a bit of a bad girl, she is surprisingly naive about what marriage will require of her (yes, you'll have to kiss your husband and sleep with him too!) but when she is with Asher, she doesn't seem to be that completely innocent naif which makes for a bit of a strange dichotomy in her character. Wilson has done a nice job drawing the princess as having both a public and a private persona as well as how lonely it must be to have to be on guard all the time. Asher is a character to sympathize with, torn apart by circumstance, cheated on by his fiancee and the man who meant the world to him, now feeling as if his music has left him, unable to work through stage fright and play to his potential, and falling for a princess set to marry another man in mere days. The only other characters who are in the book for any meaningful span of time are Willow the corgi and James, seemingly the only attendant in the entirety of Buckingham Palace. This makes the book fly past at break neck speed, with only one real plot line. There are some fun nods to Charles and Diana's wedding and relationship that even casual royal watchers should pick up on sprinkled in the book (and in fact one of them makes for a rather pivotal plot point). Anglophiles, contemporary romance fans, and little girls who wanted to grow up to be princesses will enjoy this light and easy tale and may want to search out Royal Wedding with Fred Astaire and Jane Powell, the movie that served as inspiration for this breezy, quick read.

Thanks to Melissa at Pocket Books for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens
Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
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
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
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 New York Time Footsteps by various authors
The Paris Secret by Karen Swan

Reviews posted this week:

The Little French Bistro by Nina George
Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly
Plaid and Plagiarism by Molly MacRae

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

To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning
Emily Goes to Exeter by M.C. Beaton
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens
Less by Andrew Sean Greer