Wednesday, January 30, 2013

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.

Above All Things by Tanis Rideout. The book is being released by Amy Einhorn Books on Feb. 12, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: “Tell me the story of Everest,” she said, a fervent smile sweeping across her face, creasing the corners of her eyes. “Tell me about this mountain that’s stealing you away from me.”

In 1924 George Mallory departs on his third expedition to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Left behind in Cambridge, George’s young wife, Ruth, along with the rest of a war-ravaged England, anticipates news they hope will reclaim some of the empire’s faded glory. Through alternating narratives, what emerges is a beautifully rendered story of love torn apart by obsession and the need for redemption.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Review: A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

Top 10 Reasons Book Clubs will want to read A Land More Kind Than Home



And once your reading group has chosen A Land More Kind Than Home, you can use this Reading Group Guide to stimulate discussion once you've stopped giggling over the book trailer.

Children are naturally curious.  Right from the get go, they are exploring their world and learning more than we ever expect through their senses.  That curiousity doesn't disappear as children get older.  They are still attracted to the forbidden, approaching it sideways and quietly and oftentimes without adults realizing what they are seeing, hearing, and learning.  In Wiley Cash's debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, there are big and sinister consequences for children harmlessly and unexpectedly snooping about as children do.

Opening with the testimony of Adelaide Lyle, midwife and former church member, it is immediately clear that what goes on in the fanatical, pentecostal Rover Road Church of Christ in Signs Following, is not only beyond the ken of most religious folks but also dangerous and potentially criminal.  After the cover-up of the death by snakebite of one of the elderly members of the congregation, Adelaide takes all of the children out of the church for their own safe-keeping, running Sunday school out of her home instead of the church.  But even her precautions cannot prevent nine-year old Jess and his older brother Christopher, called Stump and who was born mute, from seeing what they do and precipitating the coming tragedy.

Narrated in turn by Adelaide Lyle, Jess, and local Sheriff Clem Barefield, the story centers on Jess and Stump's inadvertant discovery of something certain adults want to hide and on the threatening, malevolent preacher Carson Chambliss who has so thoroughly warped the congregation that they blindly follow him in subjecting themselves to burns, poison, and snake handling to prove the depths of their faith.  Chambliss is supposed to be a man of God and he certainly turns his hypnotic charisma on at times but he also keeps his flock in terrified thrall, leading through fear and demanding complete devotion, which Jess and Stump's mother willing offers, taking her mute son to Chambliss and his church for healing.

Cash has written an intense, dramatic tale of faith and belief and how far people can be willing to go in the name of both.  The plot slowly builds tension even despite the inevitable outcome, keeping the reader anxious about the clearly foreshadowed unraveling of the community in the wake of everything that happens.  Cash's depiction of Jess and his struggle of how to make sense of the secrets adults keep and why those secrets matter is well done even if Jess occasionally seems far older than his years.  The sense of place in the novel is phenomenal and truly evokes Western North Carolina and its mountains, the way that its communities can be so self-contained and closed.  And in the end, the over-arching feel of an almost Biblical retribution is so immediate, visceral, and powerful that the reader will continue thinking about this book long after the final page is turned.

For more information about Wiley Cash and the book visit his website, his Facebook page, or follow him on Twitter. 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 the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Review: The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler

If your life, your very identity, is a lie, can you live hiding your true self forever?  Or would you eventually have to leave the life you'd built on that false foundation no matter what the consequences for you or those left behind?  In Nancy Richler's The Imposter Bride, this question, tied to questions of survival, love, interconnectedness, and the desperate secrets of World War II, drives the whole of this Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlisted novel.

Opening with Lily Azerov, now Kramer, sharing a plum with her new husband in a small room off of a banquet hall in Montreal just after their wedding ceremony, the novel alternates between Lily's new life as a mail order bride in Canada and her daughter Ruth's life and search for the mother who abandoned her and her father when she was only three months old.  When Lily arrives in Canada after escaping a devastated post-war Europe via Palestine, she finds herself abandoned on the train platform.  Her intended husband Sol took one look at her and left her sitting there so his brother Nathan ends up marrying the clearly emotionally damaged Lily instead.  And it is as early as her wedding that the fact that she has assumed a false identity is clear, if not to all, then to some of the Jewish community in Montreal, specifically to the real Lily Azerov's cousin, Ida Pearl Krakauer, who has gatecrashed the wedding.  Then the narrative flips to first person, told by Ruth, Nathan and Lily's daughter as she reminisces about the unexpected gift that arrived addressed to her on her sixth birthday.  It was from her long-absent mother and contained nothing besides a pretty rock and a notecard with the details of where and when it was found.

As the novel progresses, it moves seamlessly back and forth between the details of Lily's life as a young wife, her memories of life on the Polish/Russian border and the horrors that drove her to her deception, the contents of the real Lily Azerov's journal, Ruth's feelings about growing up without a mother, and her ultimate search for the truth about the woman who could seemingly so easily walk out on her own precious baby.  World War II damaged and shattered so many, including people not even born until after the war.  The weight of the past and the loss of most of an entire generation haunted those who survived, a traumatic and terrible legacy that they in turn passed on to their own children as is evidenced here by Lily and Ruth and the ghosts in their lives.  For Lily, there was no escape from her past within her assumed identity.  And for Ruth there was nothing that could make up for her mother's choice to leave her despite the enveloping love with which the rest of the family surrounded her.

This tale is a beautifully written but heartbreaking one.  Richler has constructed it incredibly intricately with each of the narratives interlocking with the other and yet still carefully closing in on themselves.  There's some easy but delicately handled symbolism such as the rocks sent to Ruth from her mother much as stones are left on a grave suggest the resilience of enduring memory and the pair of journals left behind with Lily Azerov's being full while Lily Kramer's is blank, her story still unknown, still to be discovered.  Although the narrative circles back upon itself time and again, it still moves forward smoothly and cleanly.  The tone is generally melancholy, filled with unavoidable and overwhelming loss, but there is nothing graphic despite the portions set amongst the horrors of the war.  Relationships, identity, and what we have to do to survive our lives form the backbone of each part of the novel and the ending is well earned with the characters living exactly where they should be and the narrative neatly coming full circle one final time.  Quietly, carefully, and elegantly written, this is a book not to be missed.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

News From Heaven by Jennifer Haigh
The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler
Farewell, Dorothy Parker by Ellen Meister

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

Reviews posted this week:

A Passionate Affair With a Perfect Stranger by Lucy Robinson
How to Tame a Willful Wife by Christy English
The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha
Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman

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

2012

Yours Affectionately, Jane Austen by Sally Smith O'Rourke
A Different Kind of Normal by Cathy Lamb
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie James

2013

News From Heaven by Jennifer Haigh
Farewell, Dorothy Parker by Ellen Meister

Monday Mailbox

It was another fantastically busy week in my mailbox. The good news is the sheer volume of wonderful reads waiting for me. The bad news is the sheer volume of wonderful reads waiting for me. ;-) This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Elusive Dawn by Gabriele Wills came from the author and Premier Virtual Author Book Tours for a blog tour.

The second book in Wills' Muskoka trilogy, I am looking forward to revisiting the wonderful characters I met in The Summer Before the Storm.

The Paradise Guest House by Ellen Sussman came from Ballantine Books and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

I remember hearing about the Balinese nightclub bombing so this novel about one American who survived it and her search for the man who saved her that night is completely intriguing.

The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

About a young couple who desperately want a baby, when Elle is declared brain dead after an accident and then discovered to finally be pregnant, husband Matt faces an agonizing decision. This one looks to be such an emotional book that it will require an entire box of Kleenex.

The Farm by Emily McKay came from Berkley UK.

About a creepy, terrifying future, without having read it, there's something about this one that brings to mind The Handmaid's Tale for me. Not my usual sort of book, this fleeting resemblance makes me infinitely curious though.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan came from Doubleday.

Centered around an American Born Chinese woman dropped into the opulence and excess of Singaporean society because of her boyfriend's family, this one promises to be highly entertaining and over the top.

Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss came from Henry Holt.

Two close friends coming of age in the '60s and wanting more out of life than their mothers teach them to expect, I do gravitate towards novels about friendships, especially those that are terribly broken as this one comes to be.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Lori's Reading Corner as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Sunday Salon: Second semester school reading

I went to the bookstore the other day. This is not unusual in the least. What was unusual is that I was there to get books for my children. Second semester is starting and the freshman needed books for her English class. The Sophomore needed a book for his science class. I'm always incredibly curious to see what books their teachers are asking them to read. Last semester I was practically gaga over the fact that R.'s Honors Earth Science teacher was using A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson in lieu of a textbook. R. was appalled at how much I gushed to the teacher about it. Now I'm looking at her Honors English selection (Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines, and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson) and find myself a tad bit disappointed that I've already read all of them so there's nothing wonderful for me to discover with her. I will be curious to see if her opinion on each of them matches up with mine. (She loathed A Short History of Nearly Everything while I found it fascinating so...) The one book I bought that I have never read (well, besides the rather large stack I bought for myself--it was a book fair fundraiser for the high school so how could I not load up?!) was W.'s science book.  In addition to his textbook, he'll be reading Richard Preston's The Hot Zone this semester for Honors Biology. I love that the teachers in so many different disciplines are using books that are not textbooks and have the chance of really grabbing a kid's interest in ways that textbooks just about never do. Will I read this too? It remains to be seen. But maybe.

So this past reading week, I dipped into the lives of many different people all connected by their home town even if some of them had long since left it behind them and others still live there. I emigrated to Canada under a false identity and then disappeared leaving behind a husband and three month old baby who would grow up to try and solve the mystery of her mother. I gained a load of self-confidence and changed my life thanks to the ghost of Dorothy Parker egging me on. And I'm just starting on an adventure with the Lindbergh family. Where did your book travels take you this week?

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Review: Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman

When you get married, you don't envision losing your spouse, at least until you're both very old and grey.  You imagine a long and happy life together.  But not everyone is granted this ideal.  Some people lose their spouses at quite a young age.  Young widows are not what we expect though and so the support systems in place for widowed people is not tailored to fit their experiences, the grief of those who only shared a life for a short, but no less intense for the length, time together.  Traditional support groups focus on the loss of a lifetime partner and how to adjust and mourn the person with whom most of your life was spent, focused more on the sadness than on acceptance and moving forward.  So when a young and unconventional widow, like Becky Aikman, wants to find a group to help her move on with her life, to start to live again, she has to create her own.  Chronicling the genesis of her young widow's support group, the differing journeys of all of its members, and the most recent research into grieving and resilience, journalist Aikman's non-fiction Saturday Night Widows is fascinating, delivering as it promises: "the adventures of six friends remaking their lives."
 
 After traditional grief support groups failed Aikman, she had to figure her own way to going on after losing her beloved husband Bernie to cancer.  Her gut feeling is that the way we are expected to grieve is not the way forward for many people and so although she pushed through and found her own path, she was curious if her discoveries could help other women in similar situations and if a group predicated on what she needed could help her even farther.  And so she went about creating her own group of specifically chosen young widows in a sort of sociological experiment.  She had guidelines for the women and wanted to make sure that she wasn't trying to include women who would have benefitted more from serious professional help than from a group of peers.  This book grew out of her experience with the Saturday Night Widows group, their personal experiences and the lives they went on to rebuild with each others' help over the course of a year.
 
None of the women who comprise the group knew each other at the outset.  And aside from the fact that they were young widows, they came from a variety of situations.  Some had young children, some older kids, and some no children.  They lost their husbands to lingering illness, suicide, and flukey accident.  Some weren't working and some had very high powered jobs into which they could submerge their grief.  But all of them discovered through their shared pain and shared experience that they were remembering their capacity for happiness, finding healing and comfort, discovering new friends, and stepping outside their comfort zones with the company of the helping hands they needed to move onto the next chapters in their lives.  These widows will always carry the memories of their late husbands with them but with each other's help, they also found a way to define who each of them were/are after the death of their spouses.
 
The book goes into each of the women's past but it isn't as focused on their loss as it is on keeping moving toward the future.  They understood the pitfalls of memory in everyday actions so each month the group did something different, something that might be a sad trigger for one but not for the rest.  They went sexy, expensive lingerie shopping, they took a cooking class, they took a guided tour of the art museum focused on works of strong women, loss, and recovery, they mingled with widowers, they traveled to Morocco together, and of course, as in traditional groups, they talked and cried but they also laughed.
 
Aikman's personal story weaves through the entire narrative and she is upfront about where her life has gone before she starts the group (she is remarried and quite a few years past losing first husband Bernie).  She also includes meetings and information from professionals about the latest theories of grieving and how to work through catastrophic loss.  Certainly she's chosen her fellow group members carefully and they all do seem lucky enough to be financially stable even without their husband's income so perhaps they aren't exactly representative of all young widows but the driving idea behind their support group and how to move forward after loss is a very valuable one.  The stories in here are very personal, honest, and touching rather than depressing or heart wrenching.  There is a warm openness and a vulnerability here and it is full of lessons not just for those who have lost their life partner but for all of us who sometimes need a push to face the future head on with determination and happiness.
 
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Review: The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha

The death penalty is polarizing. Some people believe that those convicted of terrible crimes like murder should be executed while other people believe that there is nothing that justifies the taking of another person's life. There are many other permutations of these basic beliefs and reasonings behind each diametrically opposed stance. But debating it takes on a whole new wrinkle when the person looking forward to either execution or to pardoning the criminal to a life sentence instead is in fact a relative of the victim. In addition to being a novel about the death penalty and the debate over its morality, Naseem Rakha's novel The Crying Tree looks at the concept of forgiveness and the journey to the place where such a thing is possible even in the midst of great grief and loss.

The novel opens with Oregon State Penitentiary superintendant Tab Mason receiving the execution order and date for one of his prisoners. Almost twenty years after his conviction for the brutal murder of 15 year old Shep Stanley during a burglary attempt at the Stanley home, Daniel Joseph Robbin has stopped his appeals, clearing the way for his execution. It seems straighforward enough. And yet there is nothing straightforward about the situation at all.

Alternating between the current day and the months leading up to Shep's death, nothing is quite like it seems in this case. Nate Stanley moves his entire family, wife Irene, teenaged son Shep, and daughter Bliss from the small Illinois farm town they've lived in their entire lives to a wind-scoured, down on its luck Oregon town for the opportunity to be a deputy sheriff and to give the family a needed change of scenery. Irene is bitter and resentful that she has no say in the move and once in Oregon, she is unhappy and trapped feeling. Only a year into the Stanley's new life in Oregon, Shep is brutally beaten and then shot in their home, dying in his father's arms. The family is completely gutted, trapped in guilt and cycles of blame. Irene sinks into a deep depression and into the bottom of a bottle. In Shep's absence, Bliss doesn't become her parents' focus, instead being completely neglected. All of the Stanleys spend the seemingly unending next years waiting impatiently for word of Daniel Robbins' execution and grieving the sensitive, kind, and musically inclined Shep.

But it's hard to live in a place where hatred, and revenge are your constant companions and Irene finally decides that she needs to free herself from her toxic feelings, finding it within herself to write to Daniel on what would have been Shep's 25th birthday, offering him forgiveness for killing her son. This starts a ten year long correspondence between Irene and Daniel that she keeps a secret from Nate and Bliss. Because of the understanding and compassion Irene has come to feel for Daniel, instead of being elated by a date finally being set for the execution, she is horrified and determined to stop it. But her determination will bring to light long-buried secrets, guilt, and truth that could destroy the Stanleys anew.

The present day chapters are told by various characters, the Stanleys, the prison superintendent, and Daniel, although Irene is definitely the focus of the narration the majority of the time. The back and forth in time is well handled and the characters are all unique enough that there is never any doubt about the narration. The plot twists are not unexpected though and most of the characters are fairly cliched. Although the focus is meant to be on forgiveness, there is still a strong one-sided political statement about the death penalty here. Irene really struggles to come to peace with her decision to forgive Daniel but the end and its ultimate denouement cheapens her struggle. The revelations are heavy-handed and the characters' reactions to them make them less likable over all. The novel does make the reader think though and perhaps, in the end, that's enough.

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

Temple of a Thousand Faces by John Shors. The book is being released by NAL Trade on Feb. 2, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: In his international bestseller Beneath a Marble Sky, John Shors wrote about the ancient passion, beauty, and brilliance that inspired the building of the Taj Mahal. Now with Temple of a Thousand Faces, he brings to life the legendary temple of Angkor Wat, an unrivaled marvel of ornately carved towers and stone statues. There, in a story set nearly a thousand years ago, an empire is lost, a royal love is tested, and heroism is reborn.

When his land is taken by force, Prince Jayavar of the Khmer people narrowly escapes death at the hands of the conquering Cham king, Indravarman. Exiled from their homeland, he and his mystical wife Ajadevi set up a secret camp in the jungle with the intention of amassing an army bold enough to reclaim their kingdom and free their people. Meanwhile, Indravarman rules with an iron fist, pitting even his most trusted men against each other and quashing any hint of rebellion.

Moving from a poor fisherman's family whose sons find the courage to take up arms against their oppressors, to a beautiful bride who becomes a prize of war, to an ambitious warrior whose allegiance is torn--Temple of a Thousand Faces is an unforgettable saga of love, betrayal, and survival at any cost.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Review: How to Tame a Willful Wife by Christy English

Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew doesn't jibe particularly well with our modern sensibility.  Bending a woman to a man's will because it is right and expected and the way of the world makes most readers bristle with antagonism and throw out words like mysogynistic, especially female readers.  So it was a calculated risk for Christy English to take this somewhat out of favor play and rework it in an historical romance, a genre whose readers are overwhelmingly women.  How to Tame a Willful Wife is very clearly a retelling though and is handled very interestingly.

The hidebound, stiff-rumped Anthony Carrington, Earl of Ravensbrook has promised his old friend Baron Montague that he will marry the Baron's daughter and only child, Caroline, and discharge the Baron's debts as a way of thanking the old battlefield friend who saved his life not once but twice.  Caroline is very cognizant and accepting of her duty to marry well and to the man of her father's choosing.  But aside from this, she is not exactly a typical lady of her time.  Her father was gone for so much of her childhood that she was allowed to run free and act in ways that properly bred young ladies were not.  She wears breeches, rides astride, speaks her mind, trains in military arts, and just generally isn't easily led.

Anthony is powerful, arrogant, and domineering.  He expects absolute obedience out of his wife and intends to break Caroline of her unladylike, unacceptable behaviour, turning her into just another milque toast society matron.  He is very much a man of his time and their marriage will be no partnership.  He is the head of the family and the one who wears the pants (at least as far as he knows).  But Caroline is not ready to cede her freedom and all decision making to Anthony no matter how incredibly gorgeous he is or how much he makes her burn physically.  She goes toe to toe with him to maintain at least some of her control and to let him know that she won't be bulldozed but Anthony is rigidly unwilling to bend even though it is clear that his attraction to her includes her strength.  Their different views of the way that their relationship will run leads them to major conflicts and to acting behind each others' backs which could cost them their love.

The sexual attraction between the characters is sizzling and constant which is definitely a plus in a romance.  Caroline as a character is appealing in her drive to retain her individuality and ability to direct her own life.  She makes the best of her new position as the Countess of Ravensbrook and provides a caring touch that has been missing from the estate and the tenants.  Anthony is a far less appealing character in his role of the dominant, controlling, and suspicious husband.  He is a complete despot and his change of heart in the end is a bit too abrupt to be believable.  Still, this is a very interesting way to take a Regency-set historical and most likely far closer to the truth of the majority of marriages of the time than the usual romances.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Review: A Passionate Love Affair With a Total Stranger by Lucy Robinson

What happens when a certified work-a-holic, micro-managing perfectionist breaks her leg and pelvis and is forced to take a break from her high-stress, high-powered job as the director of communications for a big pharma company in the lead up to one of their most impressive drug releases, an HIV vaccine, ever?  In the case of Charley Lambert, the heroine in Lucy Robinson's latest novel, she starts up her own internet dating ghost writing business to help unlucky in love, seriously unwitty, incapable of engaging chat clients find their match online through appealing emails.

Charley's life appears just about perfect to her, what with her carefully scheduled interests, her demanding but fulfilling work life, and the fact that her boss, whom she has had a raging thing for since she met him seven years ago, has asked her to dinner.  But at the picture perfect engagement party she's organized for one of her longtime best friends and flatmate, Sam, she falls and breaks her leg and pelvis badly enough to need surgery.  When she regains consciousness after her surgery, that perfect life crumbles.  She is forbidden to work forcing her to hand over her precious job to her conniving and nasty assistant Margot.  She has to cancel all of her usual appointments, which keep her busy every hour of every day.  And her boss John, who has come to visit her at the hospital, turns out to be newly engaged to the woman he's been having an affair with for the past three years now that her divorce has come through.  Her life is literally crashing down around her and there's nothing she can do about it.

But a type A personality can't change that quickly and during her convalescence, Charley starts a business called First Date Aid to ghost write e-mails for internet daters having a hard time expressing themselves well through e-mail.  She starts writing for a woman named Shelley who is a hard driven business woman in whom Charley sees much of herself.  And as she writes to William, she not only recognizes herself in Shelley but she also starts to open up about her own life and perceptions, rationalizing that she is doing this soul searching solely on behalf Shelley.  But when William responds to her personal insights with his own revelations, Charley finds herself falling for her client's online interest to the point that she's willing to sabotage their in person date to claim William for herself.  Luckily things don't work out with this since everything is not as it seems.  And rather than taking her new found knowledge of herself and changing her life in the ways in which she'd like to, Charley, now healed, retreats back into her prior regimented and work-focused life.  But has her time off and the insightful emailing changed her permanently?

This is delightful and funny, giggle-inspiring chick lit.  Charley is an appealing character and if she's sometimes uncertain and makes the wrong choice, her usual brashness and good heart make her completely sympathetic.  The secondary characters, especially flatmate Sam, who is gorgeous and loyal if a bit undirected and other best friend Hailey, foul-mouthed and real in her attempts to support and ground Charley, are great, just the sort of people you'd want in your corner too.  The plot has a ton of twists and turns so that although the end is not such a surprise, the journey to it is good and surprising fun.  A novel with real heart about the trade-offs we all make, consciously or unconsciously, and how hard it can be to make changes even when you want to make them, this will satisfy readers looking for a sweet and humorous read.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I feel like I've been on a bit of a roll lately, staying on top of things.  I should probably glory in it because it's liable to come to a screeching halt any time now.  ;-)  It's hard to be so distractable.  ::grin:: This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

All the Lonely People by Jess Riley
The Link by Colin Tudge
The Sunshine When She's Gone by Thea Goodman
A Passionate Love Affair With a Total Stranger by Lucy Robinson

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

News of the World by Jennifer Haigh

Reviews posted this week:

Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde by Rebecca Dana
I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck
The Book of Neil by Frank Turner Hollon
All the Lonely People by Jess Riley
The Link by Colin Tudge
The Sunshine When She's Gone by Thea Goodman

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

2012

How to Tame a Willful Wife by Christy English
The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha
Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman
Yours Affectionately, Jane Austen by Sally Smith O'Rourke
A Different Kind of Normal by Cathy Lamb
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie James

2013

none for the moment

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Dancing to the Flute by Manisha Jolie Amin came from Atria.

A street child in rural India whose music will transform his life, this sounds phenomenal.

Indiscretion by Charles Dubow came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A young woman attracted to a golden couple tries to infiltrate her way into their lives. Intense and a little creepy sounding, no?

The Good Daughter by Jane Porter came from Berkley.

The second of the Brennan Sisters books, this one focuses on Kit, the eponymous good daughter who has always put everyone else's needs before hers. I read the first book so I'm curious to see where Porter takes this next character.

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri came from Riverhead Books.

A young girl growing up in Iran is certain her disappeared mother and twin sister have gone to America without her and her father and as she continues to live her life under the new Islamic regime, she imagines the life they are leading, drawing strength from her imaginings.  Just the idea of this completely captivates me.

Where the Light Falls by Katherine Keenum came from Berkley.

A young American woman expelled from college travels to Paris where she immerses herself in art and finds love with a troubled Civil War vet only to have to choose between that love and her future in art. I can't wait to crack this one open.

The Union Street Bakery by Mary Ellen Taylor came from Berkley.

A woman living above her family's struggling bakery is bequeathed a diary that spurs her a quest into the past. Delicious sounding, isn't it?

The Truth About Love and Lightning by Susan McBride came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

Secrets and family relationships, this tale of gathering storms between mother, daughter, and amnesiac man who might be the long lost grandfather is just brimming with promise.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Lori's Reading Corner as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Review: The Sunshine When She's Gone by Thea Goodman

My children are older now but I do remember the bone-weary exhaustion of their infanthoods.  My oldest child slept through the night at 4 days old and I was pretty sure my mom was a rock star for accomplishing that for me (and I was a rock star since nothing I did changed that).  Of course, that child, now a teenager, is still a champion sleeper so it obviously wasn't us.  But my other two children proved that it was nothing I did and took me right to the very edge of sanity with sleep deprivation, not sleeping through the night until 7 and 11 months respectively.  The youngest one even drove me to tell my husband that I understood how people could abuse babies because if I didn't get some sleep soon, I was going to pitch him (the baby) out his window onto his head.  We started letting him cry it out that very night.  And honestly, after the few nights it took him to learn to go to sleep and stay asleep, the very first morning after a full night's sleep for me was bliss, nirvana, and heaven all rolled together into one and I felt like an entirely new, much happier person.  Thea Goodman's novel The Sunshine When She's Gone takes the premise of the weary, sleep-deprived new parents and ups the ante quie a lot.
 
Baby Clara is six months old and she has finally slept through the night for the first time.  On this wintery Friday morning, John sees his exhausted, sick wife sleeping deeply and decides that he'll take the baby for breakfast and let Veronica rest.  He bundles the baby up, leaves a note, collects the mail, and heads out.  When the diner is closed, John contemplates his options for the morning.  Having just opened the pile of mail with the family's passports in it, he spontaneously orders the cab to take him to the airport where he and Clara board a plane to Barbados.  He's not thinking clearly, acting on the spur of the moment, and just searching for the sun and warmth that is physically missing not only from New York City in the winter but also metaphorically in his marriage since the baby arrived.
 
When Veronica finally wakes up that morning, she feels so much better than she has in months and while she is a little perplexed that John has cancelled the nanny for the day, she appreciates the thought behind him taking care of Clara, freeing her to go about her day and her work life almost like she did before she became a mother.  Almost but not quite though.  She is a bit annoyed that she can't seem to get ahold of John to see how Clara is but in the grand scheme of things, she is mostly appreciative and not too terribly concerned.  Meanwhile John is feeling pretty good about taking off for Barbados with the baby.  He's spending more quality time with this cheerful, cooing human being than he has yet and he's thinking that it's not so hard to care for her.  Inexplicably, he calls home and lies, leaving Veronica a message telling her that he's taken the baby to his mother's for the night and that they'll see her the next day.
 
As John discovers how tough it can be to have sole care of a baby, Veronica connects with their friends Art and Ines who are facing the scary uncertainties and potential problems of early pregnancy.  The couples have known each other a very long time and some of their history is explored, especially the recent history since Clara's birth, highlighting and clarifying the conflicted feelings Veronica has about being a mother and the widening rifts in the John and Veronica's marriage.  Both John's and Veronica's weekends start to spiral out of control, worsened by outside influences and their own impulsive reactions.
 
Goodman has in fact captured the desperation of sleep deprived parents, their impaired decision making, and the sometime longing to revert back to life before baby in this novel and she certainly hasn't sugar-coated it in any way.  Especially later in the book, there's a hallucinatory feel to the narrative that represents this state of being very well.  John initially comes off as a sweet, baffled man who mourns the loss of the couple that he and Veronica were before Clara and who wants nothing more than to find that engaging wife again.  But he becomes harder to sympathize with as the narrative goes on and he chooses to keep Veronica in the dark about where he and Clara actually are.  Veronica appears to be suffering from post-partum depression in addition to her sleep deprivation but there's very little about her that is particularly appealing.  Motherhood can in fact be a tough struggle made harder by guilt over the lack of fuzzy bunny thoughts that society says new mothers should have but Veronica seems to be an extreme whose own incredibly poor choices make her less and less likable. 
 
The narration swing back and forth between John and Veronica during this weekend and this method not only allows the reader to see how each is carrying on in the absence of the other (and with or without Clara) but it also keeps the tension level high as both of them move closer and closer to their lowest, most dangerous moment and ultimately to their returns to each other.  The reader quite literally reads with heart in throat and a terrible sense of mounting unease.  The ending is a bit abrupt and skips over answering the hard questions about how they moved past the weekend both together and separately but it does give a few clues as to the state of their marriage and their future even if it doesn't explain how they got there.  An intriguing and quick read about marriage and parenthood and coping, this is a bit of a cautionary tale but one that most parents, especially new parents will find at least a bit familiar and true even if not to the same degree.

Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Review: The Link by Colin Tudge

When I was in college, I took a class called The History of Life. It was an interdepartmental biology and geology class and it neatly concluded my science/math requirement to graduate, a very good thing for an English major. The fact that it was truly fascinating was icing on the cake. So I was terribly curious about Colin Tudge's The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor, written to introduce and give an understandable background to the lay reader about a one of a kind fossil find that rocked the scinetific world and which could prove to be of humankind's many times great-grandmother.
 
The fossil in question is named Ida and she is a 47 million year old prosimian from the Eocene era who died and was astonishingly prefectly preserved in the Messel Pit in Germany. Recovered from the pit by a private collector in 1982, Ida was sold 25 years later to the University of Oslo where she has been the subject of intense scientific study. The book opens with a detailed description of how Ida could have died and ended up in the pit 47 million years ago. It discusses the intense excitement of the few scientists priviledged to see her fossil as the University acquired her and prepared to present her to the world. Chapters discuss the Eocene itself, its climate, its flora and fauna as we know it from the fossil record, and the theories of evolution that lead us to surmise that Ida is potentially one of the vaunted missing links in our own lineage.
 
The different chapters establishing the scientific background to Ida are lengthy and detailed while the portion of the book actually focused on the fossil of this squirrel-sized primitive primate who was probably a tree dwelling leaper and climber is less fully explored.  Obviously science is just beginning to study this extraordinarily intact fossil and so there is still much to be deduced from her bones, the "shadow" of her fur, the imprint of the contents of her stomach, and so on but this uneven weighting in the narrative is disappointing, making it seem as if the book was rushed out before there was enough specific information on Ida herself. 
 
For me, having taken that long ago class, I was already familiar with the climate and conditions of the Eocene, the relative positions and shapes of the continents at the time, the strengths and weaknesses of the drastically incomplete fossil record, the speculations and disagreements surrounding the fossils we do have, and the evolutionary importance of other "missing link" fossils like the Archaeopteryx so the in-depth explanations of all of the above, once they had quickly refreshed my memory were overkill and I found myself wishing we could get back to what was uncovered about Ida herself and how she fit into the grand scheme of things.  As exciting a discovery as Ida was and is, I was left a little disappointed with the book.  I will, however, do a little poking around and see what else might have come to light about this fantastic fossil in the four or so years since this book was published so it did ultimately capture my interest.  And I suspect that those with a strong layman's interest in science will find this an interesting look at the workings not only of the distant prehistoric past but also the competition and cooperation in the fossil collecting and explaining world.
 
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Review: All the Lonely People by Jess Riley

Navigating family can be tricky in the extreme.  We share a history and they know us intimately, which means that they also know the most effective ways to get under our skin and pick at us.  And sometimes, although we are stuck with them because they are family, they are people we would never choose to have in our lives, mean and hateful and nasty.  How do you create a caring family to support you when your borth family has turned out so badly?  Do we need a family around us, either one of blood or one of our own making?  Jess Riley's new novel, All the Lonely People, tackles the thorny questions of what constitutes a family, what holds us together, what tears us apart, and what we owe each other.

Opening the first Thanksgiving following Jaime's mother's death from ovarian cancer six months prior, Jaime and husband Erik are gathered with her older brother Clint, his wife and daughter, and a few other relatives when Clint lets fly one of his usual mean-spirited and hurtful comments.  It all degenerates from there with Jaime completely gobsmacked and devastated by the depth of intentional nastiness and Clint completely unaware and uncaring that he is truly a bully and a jerk.  But this prize of a brother isn't Jaime's only remaining family.  Lucky woman has a remote, disapproving, high-achieving sister named Gwen and an estranged father who communicates with her maybe twice a year if she's lucky.  Jaime and Erik have been unable to have children themselves despite their longing for a baby and Erik's family consists only of his father, who is sinking into the fog of demetia.  Jaime has some wonderful close friends but they are spread out geographically and busy in their own lives.  So when one of her friends makes an off the cuff joking suggestion about advertising on Craigslist for a new family for Christmas, Jaime slowly comes to the conclusion that she is going to do just that.  And she does, ultimately choosing four other lonely souls to become her new family.

The new family Jaime creates, each lonely and searching for connection for a variety of different reasons, is a motley assortment of completely unique, entertaining, and surprising individuals loaded down by their own emotional baggage.  She gets absorbed by their lives and situations in order to try and block out the pain of estrangement from her own family, her own severe disappointment not only over her inability to conceive but also her perception of husband Erik's response to this, and her ongoing grief at the loss of her mother.  But it is also through these perfect strangers that she learns to let go of her resentment and view her biological family through clearer eyes and come to terms with who they each are, who she is, and what they all, ultimately mean to each other.

The characters here are mostly wonderful (except Clint who is a total tosser) as they grapple with some quite serious issues.  They are wistful and funny, charming and devoted, supportive and eccentric.  Jaime herself is good-hearted and sympathetic, even when she has trouble recognizing that she's got the best family in the world right at her side in her husband Erik.  Some of the characters are more interesting and fleshed out than others but don't you always like some relatives better than others?  Jaime's old friends seem to be given somewhat short shift in the story though.  And the plot moves along not entirely evenly.  The ending is a bit too easy, especially for anyone who has faced contentious family situations or estrangements from close relatives.  I did thoroughly enjoy the little snippets of Madison that were included in the book as they brought back memories of the year we lived there.  Over all, this is a humorous novel and a quick read.  Anyone who has that one (or more) relative who makes you want to change your name and avoid family reunions or even just skip the Christmas dinner drama will recognize a little bit of themselves here.

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

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Review: The Book of Neil by Frank Turner Hollon

If someone came up to you on the street and told you that he was Jesus, would you believe him or would you think he escaped from the closest locked psychiatric ward?  Just how would we recognize the second coming of the Messiah in this very secular day and age?  And assuming this person really was Jesus, what all would you do for Him if He asked?  These sound like very philosophical, religious questions, and of course they are, but they are the fascinating questions at the heart of Frank Turner Hollon's novel The Book of Neil.

Neil is an unhappy guy.  His wife and daughter think he's a lousy provider because they can't afford all the material things they want.  They have nothing but scorn for him and clearly have zero finer feelings (love, affection, etc.) towards the poor guy.  And he really wants to make them happy, give them what they want, in hopes that they will love him again (although readers are pretty sure there's never been any real emotion beyond greed on their parts).  This is where Jesus comes in.  He's come back and been trying to get noticed for years but the only notice he's gotten has been as another mentally ill street preacher or a kook. 

So when he meets Neil on the local country club golf course (Neil can't afford to join despite his wife and daughter's desire to do so), he tosses out the insane idea of Neil being his accomplice in robbing a local bank.  It's no wonder people think he's not quite sane, right?  But Neil is certain that this in fact Jesus and that there is a legitimate and understandable reason behind the request.  The deal will be that Jesus will get the publicity after he's arrested and Neil will get away with the much coveted money.  And surprisingly, this in fact works and the book changes narration to include all the people that Jesus touches: the police chief whose only son died as a child, the atheist reporter from the Times who is only covering this because of the intense interest in the "Jesus Bandit," the bank teller who was held up, a mother who believes that this unidentifiable man could be her long since disappeared mentally ill son, and the devout President of the United States.

Each of the narrators is grappling with his or her own life, looking for direction, searching both internally and externally to make sense of life and their particular outlooks on it.  While each of the characters is given a situation that would make him or her more willing to believe or disbelieve the word of Jesus, if that is who he is, they are not quite as fleshed out as they could have been to make their tales and their takes on the situation more compelling.  The plot itself runs along at a good pace but the overall depth is missing.  And there are many questions that remain unanswered here.  Perhaps that's intentional as faith itself is certainly a set of conventionally unanswerable questions but in the context of the novel, this lack of textual certainty works against the premise.  The characters have all decided if this is really Jesus but the reader, at least this reader, is left uncertain.  Despite the flaws, it is thought provoking about our very secular and material way of life and the mystery of belief.

Thanks to Meryl Zegarek PR for sending me a copy of this book for 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.

All This Talk of Love by Christopher Castellani. The book is being released by Algonquin on Feb. 5, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: It’s been fifty years since Antonio Grasso married Maddalena and brought her to America. That was the last time she would see her parents, her sisters and brothers—everything she knew and loved in the village of Santa Cecilia, Italy. She locked those memories away, as if Santa Cecilia stopped existing the day she left. Now, with children and grandchildren, a successful family-run restaurant, and enough daily drama at home, Maddalena sees no need to open the door to the past and let the emotional baggage and unmended rifts of another life spill out.

But Prima, Antonio and Maddalena’s American-born daughter, was raised on the lore of the old country. And as she sees her parents aging, she hatches the idea to take the entire family back to Italy—hoping to reunite Maddalena with her estranged sister and let her parents see their homeland one last time. It is an idea that threatens to tear the Grasso family apart, until fate deals them some unwelcome surprises, and their journey home becomes a necessary voyage.

Writing with warmth and grace, Chris Castellani delivers a seductive feast for readers. All This Talk of Love is an incandescent novel about sacrifice and hope, loss and love, myth and memory.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Props to the library

If you know me at all, you know I am not much of a library user.  It's not that I don't like the library or that I don't appreciate how important libraries are; it's just that I prefer to own my books.  I don't like to have to read them on someone else's schedule and I definitely don't like returning books I have loved.  Plus, what kind of stuff do people have on their hands when they are touching the library books?  They could be filthy.  (Yes, I am aware that people can have the same unclean hands and leaf through a book at the bookstore before I come along and buy it.  I never said I was rational!)  Despite my lack of patronage, I always make sure to get a library card whenever we move to a new city.  And I often donate books to their used book sale, happily buy new to me books from said sale, and have even run in a couple of fundraising races here to benefit the library.  The community and country would definitely be far worse off without them whether I choose to use them myself or not.

So I've used my library card here in Charlotte a grand total of twice.  The first time was a couple of years ago when one of my bookclubs chose to read a mystery (with bodies and murders and such!) that I knew there was no way I would ever consider keeping.  In all honesty, I wasn't even sure I'd ultimately read it.  So no point in buying it really.  I found it on the new release shelves at the library, checked it out, and went on my way.  Unfortunately, my way was on vacation and that was the summer that I sank the boat.  (Have you not read about that fiasco and 70 odd soggy books?  Enjoy it here.)  Not only did I end up paying to replace that waterlogged book, but because I got it from the library, instead of paying for the mass market copy, I got to buy the library a brand new library bound copy.  I don't begrudge them that but oh the irony!

And that brings me to my second use of the library card.  Today.  I have been plugging my way through a book I've had for a while and in fact it is one that also went down on the boat with the library's original copy of Blackman's Coffin.  This book that I'm reading now that was rescued from Davy Jones' locker?  It's taken me a while to read because I am having to gingerly peel each page apart to read it.  That's not the worst of it though: the color plates in the book are completely fused together as a result of their deep-sixing.  And I tried to get creative to separate them because who reads a book with beautiful color photographs and doesn't want to see them?  Certainly not me.  In any case, re-wetting and trying to carefully pull each page apart doesn't work, just in case you thought you might try it yourself (for unknown reasons).  And sometimes the color plate sections are completely fused to the pages immediately prior and immediately following them, making those pages impossible to read.  Now imagine if you will, yours truly the anal retentive coming across this situation.  You're welcome for the laugh!  But I am nothing if not crafty and I hopped onto the library website, looked up the book, found the branch closest to me with it on the shelf, and added it into my daily errand run.  Success! Not only was the book right where it was supposed to be (in fact, it wasn't checked out at any branch at the moment), but it's the same copy I have so the page numbers match exactly.  And angels sang hosannas in the highest.

Yay for my local library!  Keeping the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments to a minimum for me today, they rock.  And now I can finish the book tonight after having checked out all of the lovely photographs and all will be right with the world.  (But how weird is it that 100% of my library card usage is in conjunction with sinking the boat 3 1/2 years ago?)

Review: I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck

I am a member of the Women's National Book Association. Here in the Charlotte chapter, we have been tossing around the idea of starting a book club for some time now but we weren't sure exactly how we'd go about it and what we'd read. And then I thought about the fact that we as a national organization create a list of Great Group Reads for October's National Reading Group month. Yup. We had a pre-selected list of books that should be ideal for reading groups all year long. And so our new book club was born, one focused solely on the list of Great Group Reads. The first book the newly formed group chose to read was Lily Tuck's I Married You For Happiness, a rumination on the nature of marriage, loss, and love.

Just before the novel starts, Philip has come home from his job as a college math professor, gone upstairs to change before dinner, and died of an apparent heart attack. And so the story opens with Nina, his wife of 43 years, holding his cooling hand in their bedroom as she spends one last night beside her husband and remembering their life together.  A final goodbye before the realities of death and its attendant needs take over.  Taking place over the next eight hours, Nina's thoughts flit through her memories of their long marriage, the good times and the bad, the significant and the insignificant, the known and the unknown.  She recalls the story of their marriage in all its banality and its uniqueness.  Her memories come in flashes, a sort of chronological chaos, perhaps reflective of sudden bereavement and the reader can't necessarily place when in their life together each separate incident occurred.  She gives a voice to Philip through her memories of his erudite lectures on probability and philosophy.  As she muses on their life, there are reminders of the passing of the night as well, with nocturnal sounds, the knowledge of their congealing dinner on the table, her donning the red jacket Philip once gave her as a gift that she seldom wore, the lowering level of the wine bottle beside the bed.

The writing here is spare and yet beautiful.  In many ways, as Nina tells her version of their marriage, there is a frozen remoteness to the tale and she doesn't shy away from her own petty jealousies and revenges even if she tells of them in the emotional vaccuum of shock.  The acknowledgment of marriage as between two people but influenced by others and always flawed is clear here.  But this acknowledgment doesn't preclude the contentment or overall quiet happiness of the couple, no matter what the intrusions of others, even including infidelities.  This is not a novel about the vibrant joy of the newly-wed but about the sustaining peace of enduring love.  It is a brief, affecting novel, very literary and eminently discussable for book clubs.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Review: Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde by Rebecca Dana

If Oscar and Felix are the original Odd Couple, Rebecca and Cosmo aren't far off, at least on the surface, in this sweet memoir of their brief time as roommates.  Rebecca is a journalist who writes primarily about pop culture and fashion.  She's twenty-seven years old and just coming out of a failed relationship that she expected to be her happily ever after when she moves from her beloved Manhattan to the Orthodox community of Lubavitchers in Brooklyn.  Even more startling than moving from the incredibly secular world she inhabits is the fact that she moves in with Cosmo, a Russian immigrant and ordained rabbi who is having a crisis of faith.  In a way, both of them are floundering around without any clear direction for their future and their exposure to the life of the other helps to nudge them gently in the direction they each ultimately want to travel.

Rebecca long dreamed of moving to New York and escaping her native Pittsburgh, a place she never felt she belonged.  She is very much a secular Jew so the fact that she ends up on the fringes of an Orthodox neighborhood when she and her boyfriend split up can only be put down to the vagaries of Craigslist ads rather than a desire on her part to examine any religious heritage.  The fact that very conservative and traditional Cosmo preferred a male roommate and yet acquiesced easily to Rebecca's interest in moving in is less easily explainable.  But no matter how they ended up in the same two bedroom, kosher-kitchen apartment, it is certain that each of them is a foreign country to the other one.

On the surface a modern fashion-conscious journalist with access to some of the most exclusive and fantastic parties in New York has less than nothing in common with a traditional Lubavitcher rabbi waiting for his green card, learning jujitsu, and working in a copy shop in Brooklyn.  And yet, both of them are searching for something to replace the dreams they once entertained about their futures and which haven't worked out the way they had hoped.  They are faced with questions and finding meaning in their lives, a coming of age in adulthood when they'd already thought their questions would be long since answered.  Dana is very open and honest about her life in transition, her slowly developing friendship with Cosmo, and the seemingly inexplicable interest she develops in the women of the community on the edges of which she finds herself.  She is clearly not perfect herself and never suggests as much as she hunts for identity.  The tale is humorous at times and poignant at others.  Quite well-written, it is very definitely a New York tale and the cast of people who walk across the page could only exist in a city like New York.  But they are interesting and appealing, their uncertainty is thought-provoking, and spending time in the pages of their lives, especially Dana's and Cosmo's, is interesting and worth the time.

Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Lady Most Willing by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Connie Brockway
On the Map by Simon Garfield
Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde by Rebecca Dana

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Link by Colin Tudge
All the Lonely People by Jess Riley

Reviews posted this week:

Vanity Fare by Megan Caldwell
Happily Ever Madder by Stephanie McAfee
The Lady Most Willing by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Connie Brockway
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
On the Map by Simon Garfield

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

2012

The Book of Neil by Frank Turner Hollon
How to Tame a Willful Wife by Christy English
The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha
Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman
Yours Affectionately, Jane Austen by Sally Smith O'Rourke
A Different Kind of Normal by Cathy Lamb
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie James

2013

nothing at the moment

Monday Mailbox

A week or two without books makes the week that then comes around with books in the mailbox just that much more exciting. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Secret of the Nightingale Palace by Dana Sachs came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

An estranged grandmother and granddaughter go on a road trip together to return some Japanese artwork to the grandmother's long-lost friend and tackle some of their painful history with each other as they travel. Sounds wonderful!

Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde by Rebecca Dana came from Amy Einhorn Press and LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

An atheist fashion reporter and an Orthodox rabbi living together as roommates? Truth is stranger than fiction and this looks terrific.

News From Heaven by Jennifer Haigh came from Harperand TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

Having previously read and enjoyed Haigh's works, including Baker Towers, the setting for this novel of interconnected stories, I am looking forward to this one.

The Sunshine When She's Gone by Thea Goodman came from Henry Holt and LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

It's been a lot of years since my kids had me sleep-deprived but this tale of a couple trying to adjust to a baby, where the husband takes the baby off to the Caribbean on the spur of the moment and without asking his wife about it sounds very interesting.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Lori's Reading Corner as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Review: On the Map by Simon Garfield

Don't you just love maps? I do. I used to love having possession of the atlas whenever we went on a road trip, carefully following along, tracing my finger on the wiggling lines across the page. And one of the very best books ever given to me came from my college geology professor and was an enormous world atlas that showed maps of all sorts of interesting things.  I still own it although many of its maps are sadly out of date now and I occasionally open it up and leaf through it, letting my imagination take me places on its maps that I've never visited  I love my old globe that shows Germany as two separate countries and the USSR as one monolithic country.  In his accessible and informative book about maps, their history, what they tell us about ourselves, and their future incarnations, Simon Garfield has captured the fascination we human beings have long had with maps.  On the Map is a lay cartographer's dream, engrossing and packed with wonderful tidbits of information about where we are in the world, where we've been, and where we are going.

Ranging from the very first written maps still in existence today to the state of the art mapping we are doing now not only of physical place but of other unknown areas like the brain, this book traces the exciting progress from unknown to known.  The book takes mapping and the history surrounding it and grounds it firmly in the easily understandable language of popular science.  Garfield is clearly passionate about the subject and he casts a wide net here concentrating not just on maps as they evolved and changed throughout history but also discussing the lives of those who advanced our knowledge of the world and our place in it, the explorers as well as the influential cartographers who never left their own homes.  He touches on the odd and fascinating ways that maps have been used and reputed to have been used in modern times such as tracking the movements of a probable murderer and encased in Monopoly games to show WWII prisoners the way out of their POW camps. 

The book dispels some long-standing cartological myths and offers insight into the source of common phrases: "Here be dragons" was never actually printed on a map to indicate a dearth of information and "in the limelight" started because of the use of small calcium oxide (lime) lights to map Ireland through its constant fog and mist and which subsequently found use in the theater.  There are portions on the chicanery practised by map, the forgeries and the thieves, and the errors, intentional or not, that existed unchallenged for so long.  Garfield covers pirate maps and the lure of "X marks the spot" and other map related things that have so long caught our collective fancies.  The tidbits of information are not so in depth as to be overwhelming to the lay reader and each of the chapters is fairly self contained so that this is the perfect book into which to dip.  The maps aren't the greatest quality but they will pique the interest of the reader to find out more.  On the Map is a delightful wander through the stories, history, and anecdotes surrounding maps and our insatiable desire to explore, especially for anyone who once willingly unfolded all those road maps impossible to return to their original size simply for the pleasure of perusing them.

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

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Review: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Do you ever read a book and see the movie playing in your head when you read along?  For me, Amor Towles' debut novel Rules of Civility is the perfect example of this.  But instead of a big, brash Hollywood production, it unfurled for me as if it was an old time glamorous black and white movie, and not simply because of the time period in which it is set.  It has that old Hollywood sensibility to it, a class and a feel that you can't find anymore, but captured here remarkably true and authentic.  Cinematic, jazzy, and well-written, this was a fantastic book club read.

Opening in the mid '60s at a photography exhibit, Katey Content sees an old friend pictured twice in the photos taken with a hidden camera on New York subways almost 30 years prior.  The first picture of Tinker Grey shows him as confident, successful, and debonair.  The second picture shows him dirty and poor but strangely alive.  Seeing these pictures takes Katey back to that fateful time, 1938-39, the year she and her roommate Eve met Tinker Grey and everything changed, a time frozen forever in her memory and never shared with her husband not because it is salacious but because it is too intensely personal.

Katey is an ambitious working girl from an immigrant background and Eve is a pretty, wealthy girl from Iowa, neither one the sort of young woman that New York elevates, celebrates and acknowledges but each searching for her own niche in the City.  They meet Tinker Grey, who has the world of private school, exclusive summers, and wealth in his voice on New Year's Eve at a subterranean jazz bar.  The three of them quickly become inseparable, traveling through the city, partying and having adventures as only the young, single, and apparently golden can until a near tragedy cleaves their trio, changing the dynamic between them and ultimately exposing things better left concealed.
 
This is a novel of privilege and class distinction, secrets and shifting truths, the false camouflage of appearances, and an empty but glittering desolation.  There are many twists and permutations to the story, all of which suit the characters as they are drawn here, langorous and youthfully weary.  The novel is alive with its literary precursors in all the allusions evident in the text and indeed in the echoing plot itself.  A sensuous and captivating read, this feels very much like an homage to Gatsby and his own brand of glittering superficiality.  Readers who appreciate well-done period pieces, and specifically the luscious lure of the moneyed class just before the second World War, will find this a completely enticing and marvelous read.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Review: The Lady Most Willing by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Connie Brockway

I have always had a soft spot for the literary convention of kidnapped brides ever since I saw the charming movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  It just tickled me that the right women would be shanghai'd, forced to spend time with one or more initially unappealing men and yet, in the brief time of captivity meet their perfect match.  I know, I know.  It's called Stockhausen's Syndrome.  But not in romances; it's not creepy there.  In romances, especially those set in crumbling, freezing castles in Scotland during a blizzard, this is a perfectly valid and heart-warming plot contrivance.  And in this three part novel, written by three of the biggest and most popular names in romance, it is perfectly charming.

In this collaborative novel, Taran Ferguson, the Laird of the Fergusons, has hatched a plan to find his two unmarried nephews brides.  Taran himself has no children so his sisters' sons are his heirs and yet neither one shows any likelihood of getting married and providing heirs of his own any time soon.  Robin, the Comte de Rocheforte was the son of Taran's sister and an impoverished French count so he doesn't have two nickels to rub together.  And since he's the one who will inherit Taran's crumbling, desperately in need of a cash infusion castle, he must find an heiress,  Byron, the Earl of Oakley, daughter of another of Taran's sisters, just suffered a broken betrothal when he discovered his fiancee in a clinch with her dancing master.  But Taran wants both nephews married now.  So when Oakley and Robin come for their annual winter visit, he and some of his loyal men raid a ball at the not too distant castle of an English lord and abduct some potential brides.  The men carry off four women (one by accident as she's not an heiress) and because he happened to be sleeping in the carriage they comandeered, the Duke of Bretton as well.  Once everyone is assembled at Finovair Castle, a blizzard traps all of them together, making the passes over which the women's potential rescuers must travel impossible, and guaranteeing that the eight main characters must spend some quality time together.

Each of the three authors takes one couple as her focus, similarly to a novella but each pairing builds on the previous one as well.  The most unifying thread of all is Miss Marilla Chisholme, the most beautiful of the group of women and an heiress to boot.  She's quite pleased with the prospect of the titled gentlemen, acting fairly scandalously with each of the men in turn, hoping to capture the attention of one of them.  But the Duke of Bretton and Catriona Burns, both accidental kidnappees, bond quite quickly.  Finding that they are very much in synch with each other, they get to know each other deeply and seriously and wonder if the depth of their love can be real and sustaining.  And so Bret is out of the running for the forward Marilla.  Next she sets her sights on Byron, Earl of Oakley and he initially thinks that her complete lack of regard for convention and propriety, which is 180 degrees different than his former fiancee, might suit him.  But he quickly realizes that instead of the flamboyant Marilla, he is in fact drawn to her older sister Fiona, who has a scandalous secret in her past.  Between them, the stiff-rumped earl and the woman with a muddy reputation will have to decide if they care for society's misguided pronouncements on each of them or if they belong together.  And so the rapacious Marilla zeros in on Robin, Comte de Rocheforte.  But he and Lady Cecily Tarleton, the quiet English beauty who has a reputation for having a meek and compliant personality, have fallen hard for each other from the minute they set eyes on each other.  Their chief hurdle to happiness together is reputed rakehell Robin believing that he is worthy of Cecily and proper Cecily being willing to drive her own future.

Each of the love stories is fairly charming and Marilla's obvious ploys with the men lend an air of frivolity and strained hilarity to the enforced togetherness.  Each of the characters is carefully written to be quite distinct which makes sense given the different writing styles of the authors.  The biggest drawback to the novel is that each of the characters falls in love so very quickly and their stories start and finish over the course of three days, giving a rushed feeling to them, especially to Marilla's fate.  But over all, historical romance fans, especially existing fans of these three authors, will thrill to this fast-reading, well-integrated collaboration.

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