It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I forgot to post the week before last and this past week I was driving all over the country taking my youngest child on college visits so not much reading or reviewing was accomplished. This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this week are:

The Lonely Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya
Portugal by Cyril Pedrosa
To Keep the Sun Alive by Rabeah Ghaffari
The Printed Letter Bookshop by Kathrine Reay

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Bottom of the Sky by Rodrigo Fresan
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George
A Moveable Feast edited by Don George
Haben by Haben Girma

Reviews posted this week:

Gold Fever by Steve Boggan

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

The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handle
Oh, Tama! by Mieko Kanai
The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Exposure by Jean-Philippe Blondel
Here I Am! by Pauline Holdstock
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar by Olga Wojtas
Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager
Granny’s Got a Gun by Harper Lin
White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf
At Briarwood School for Girls by Michael Knight
The Optimistic Decade by Heather Abel
All Ships Follow Me by Mieke Eerkens
Like This Afternoon Forever by Jaime Manrique
Gravity Well by Melanie Joosten
Motherhood So White by Nefertiti Austin
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Dear Baba by Maryam Rafiee
Saint Everywhere by Mary Lea Carroll
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Tonic and Balm by Stephanie Allen
Black Light by Kimberly King Parsons
In the Shadow of Wolves by Alvydas Slepikas
The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin
CinderGirl by Christina Meredith
The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones
The Chelsea Girls by Fiona Davis
Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renee Lavoie
The Fragments by Toni Jordan
The Question Authority by Rachel Cline
The Plaza by Julie Satow
The Lonely Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya
Portugal by Cyril Pedrosa
To Keep the Sun Alive by Rabeah Ghaffari
The Printed Letter Bookshop by Kathrine Reay

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

The Desert Sky Before Us by Anne Valente.

The book is being released by William Morrow Paperbacks on May 14, 2019.

The book's jacket copy says: From award-winning author Anne Valente comes this poignant and unforgettable literary novel of two estranged sisters—one, a former racecar driver and the other a recently-released prisoner—who embark on a road trip together to complete the scavenger hunt their mother designed for them before her death.

When Billie is released from a correctional facility in Decatur, her sister Rhiannon is there to meet her, even though the two haven’t seen each other in months. Painful secrets and numerous unspoken betrayals linger between them—but most agonizing is the sudden passing of their mother, a renowned paleontologist.
br> Rhiannon and Billie must overcome their differences as they set off on a road trip west, following the breadcrumb-trail of their late mother’s scavenger hunt, a sort of second funeral she planned in her final days. The sisters know the trail will end in Utah at the famous Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry, where their mother spent her career researching dinosaur fossils. But the seemingly endless days on the road soon take their toll, forcing Rhiannon and Billie to confront their hostilities and revisit old memories—both good and bad.

As they travel across the heart of America, and as a series of plane crashes in the news make their journey all the more urgent, the two sisters begin to rediscover each other and to uncover their late mother’s veiled second life, taking them on an unexpected emotional journey inward—and forcing them to come to terms with their own choices in life.

Review: Gold Fever by Steve Boggan

The California Gold Rush. 1849, right? Yes, but did you have any idea that people are still prospecting for gold in the modern day? You've probably seen ads offering to buy your old unwanted gold jewelry for top dollar or maybe you've been invited to a gold party where you take old, tangled chains and other assorted pieces you no longer want and sell them to the consultant running the party, a kind of reverse Tupperware situation. The ads and the parties may not be as prevalent today as they were just a handful of years ago, but like modern day gold prospecting, they are similar results to the global financial crisis that saw prices for gold and other precious metals skyrocket in the early twenty-teens. In Steve Boggan's Gold Fever, the UK journalist set out to try his own hand at panning for gold, to illuminate the history of the past Gold Rush, and to chronicle the community hard at work in California rivers and streams.

There's something addicting about gold and the idea of making a fortune overnight after finding just one sizable nugget and even a journalist who recognizes that panning for gold is akin to playing the lottery isn't immune to that lure. As the price of gold climbed in 2011, Steve Boggan decided to see just what it was about gold. He had no experience. He didn't even live in the US, never mind California. All he had was a healthy curiosity. So like the original '49ers, he set out to make of this mini gold rush what he could. His experiences, the people he met, and a historical perspective all weave together beautifully in this narrative travelogue.

Boggan as a prospector is charming and lucky, not because he finds gold, but because he finds acceptance and help in the small community of people looking to strike gold in modern days. His recounting of his travels through gold country today and the historic places of yesteryear are appealing and descriptive. He talks to people who have made panning for gold their reason for being and he discusses the ways in which the technique today, aided by technology, differs from 1849. He meets some real characters and he offers up his own sometimes bumbling attempts in this quest, keeping the reader fully engaged in the tale he's telling and rooting for him to actually find gold. The tone is familiar and casual and Boggan is dryly funny. He is also openly surprised by his own attraction to the hunt, his own gold fever. I'm not sure I'd want to learn to prospect for gold but I sure did enjoy going along for the ride as Boggan did. This is a delightful and interesting read for both those who know about and are interested in the 1849 Gold Rush and for those who aren't.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I forgot to post the week before last and this past week I was driving all over the country taking my youngest child on college visits so not much reading or reviewing was accomplished. This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this week are:

The Wonder of Lost Causes by Nick Trout
The Fragments by Toni Jordan
The Question Authority by Rachel Cline
More to Life by ReShonda Tate Billingsley
The Plaza by Julie Satow

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Bottom of the Sky by Rodrigo Fresan
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George
A Moveable Feast edited by Don George
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya

Reviews posted this week:

The Wonder of Lost Causes by Nick Trout
Rules of Surrender by Christina Dodd

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

The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handle
Oh, Tama! by Mieko Kanai
The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Exposure by Jean-Philippe Blondel
Here I Am! by Pauline Holdstock
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar by Olga Wojtas
Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager
Granny’s Got a Gun by Harper Lin
White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf
At Briarwood School for Girls by Michael Knight
The Optimistic Decade by Heather Abel
All Ships Follow Me by Mieke Eerkens
Like This Afternoon Forever by Jaime Manrique
Gravity Well by Melanie Joosten
Motherhood So White by Nefertiti Austin
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Dear Baba by Maryam Rafiee
Saint Everywhere by Mary Lea Carroll
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Tonic and Balm by Stephanie Allen
Black Light by Kimberly King Parsons
In the Shadow of Wolves by Alvydas Slepikas
The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin
CinderGirl by Christina Meredith
The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones
The Chelsea Girls by Fiona Davis
Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renee Lavoie
The Fragments by Toni Jordan
The Question Authority by Rachel Cline
More to Life by ReShonda Tate Billingsley
The Plaza by Julie Satow

Monday Mailbox

Just one but it looks like a delightful confection of a one. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Dictionary The Love Detective by Alexandra Potter came from me for myself.

I am stocking up on my charm-filled, love-filled beach reads and this one about a woman who finds people's happily-ever-afters but loses faith in love when her own happy future collapses sounds like it will do the trick nicely.

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.

Review: Rules of Surrender by Christina Dodd

All societies have their rules. Those rules may not always agree, but to function as an accepted member of a society, it behooves a person to hew to the expectations and requirements that society has codified. Of course there are people who get away with flouting the rules but they are almost always a person who knows the rules before intentionally violating them. These rule breakers are generally either questioning the rules or just don't care about them. When someone who is a rule follower meets a rule breaker, sparks are sure to fly, as is the case in Christina Dodd's Rules of Surrender, an early Victorian set historical romance.

Lady Charlotte Dalrumple works for the newly established Distinguished Academy of Governesses. She is no nonsense and her nickname is Miss Priss. She is hired by the Viscountess Adorna Ruskin to civilize her grandchildren, recently come to England from El Bahar, a Middle Eastern country that evokes Bedouins and camels rather than the English niceties they must conform to now. But the children are not the only ones Charlotte must try to civilize, there's also Lord Wynter Ruskin, the Viscountess' long lost son who ran away from home at the age of fifteen after his father's death. Wynter hates the hypocrisy of English society and is only willing to conform to a point for love of his mother. Horrifyingly, Charlotte finds herself attracted to this rugged, heathenish man. And that's not all of her worries since this finishing governess post is in the same village that she grew up in and from which she ran after refusing a marriage her uncle had engineered for her. As Charlotte coaches the children on how to be proper English children, she falls for them and for their father and he for her despite their opposing ideas about civilization.

Charlotte is a completely forgettable heroine. Her love for the children is sweet but as for the rest, she's an uptight snob and her relationship with the domineering Wynter never did seem to move beyond teacher chastizing pupil even though we are told it does. Wynter is an annoying and horrible, smug, chauvinist. The flowery language he uses that is supposed to be as if a translation of a foreign language is grating and his casual misogyny is awful. He purposely baits Charlotte and has to be pretending that he doesn't understand English society because he didn't leave the country until he was fully fifteen years old. He might have forgotten the nuances in the intervening decades but he wouldn't be as ignorant to the big picture as he is written. In addition to the main plot line, there are also smaller plot lines and happenings that don't integrate all that well or are too easily resolved: embezzlement, a scandal that forces marriage, Viscountess Adorna's own relationship, another runaway, and the revelations of the past. I spent much (all) of the book wanting Wynter to disappear permanently, not a good situation for a romance.  Add in what is essentially a wedding night rape and I just can't recommend this one.  One barbarian hero outside of society's rules and one stickler heroine equals one truly disappointing romance.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister.

The book is being released by St. Martin's Press on May 21, 2019.

The book's jacket copy says: Emmeline lives an enchanted childhood on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses. What he won’t explain are the mysterious scents stored in the drawers that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them. As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world--a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity, a quest that challenges the limits of her heart and imagination.

Lyrical and immersive, The Scent Keeper explores the provocative beauty of scent, the way it can reveal hidden truths, lead us to the person we seek, and even help us find our way back home.