Changes

Okay, I got bored with our old look so I took the liberty of changing it. I hope nobody minds! Let me know what you think.

BIGUO

I got half-way through The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark before I finally realized it was a lost cause. My main problem with the book is that it was boring! There was hardly any plot development and it left me restless and itching for something to happen. I kept reading because I thought "Surely, in the next chapter we'll get something to further the story along.", but no! It just kept meandering. So, I gave up.

Disquiet by Julia Leigh

I'd heard many great things about this novella, so I was happy to be the first person to get it at the library. I have to say that I was disappointed.The writing, though, definitely lived up to its billing. It is simple, pure and unadorned. I always admire writers who can convey so much by saying so little. I suppose this is just not the right type of novel for me at this time in my life. I am mostly looking for escape and authors who are high-impact storytellers. I want to fall into a novel and feel that I am living right alongside the characters, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel. Disquiet doesn't provide that level of engagement. We never know what the characters are feeling and because of the clues we get into their lives, we probably don't want to. The plot is straightforward (or so it seems): Olivia and her two young children move in with her mother after she flees her abusive husband. Olivia's brother Marcus and his wife, Sophie, also return to live in the family mansion. The strangeness then begins. I won't say more as it would give the entire novel away. Great writing, wonderful imagery, but not an escape.

Tuesday Tasting

Turn to page 56 of the current book you are reading and read the fifth sentence on the page:

"Aside from the torments of longing I endured , away from her, swinging bouts of mild elation and terror lest she should change her mind, the one cloud on our horizon was the question of where we were to live".
- from The Seance by John Harwood

Masterpiece Classic Update

I finally finished watching Wuthering Heights on Masterpiece Classic. At first, I didn't really enjoy it and that is why it has taken me several weeks to watch it. In the end, though, I thought it was very good. Not excellent, but very good. I really liked the actor who played Heathcliff, Tom Hardy. I thought he was especially exciting to watch.
Next up is Oliver Twist. I am not a huge fan of Dickens, but I will watch this. You can see a preview of it here. It is nice to see that Tom Hardy will also be in this film, playing Bill Sikes.

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones

I love reading about food and this memoir sounded like the perfect weekend reading. Judith Jones is an editor at Knopf who was responsible for publishing books by Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Claudia Roden and others who pioneered the way that Americans think about food and who influenced our tastes and cooking habits over the past 50 years. She was also a serious foodie herself who, with her husband Evan, experimented with recipes and became an accomplished home cook. Her memoir is a very enjoyable and entertaining read. I even enjoyed reading about her love for beef brains, which almost makes me want to be a vegetarian. I recommend this if you're in the mood for an intelligent and satisfying read.

Books I Gave Up On (BIGUO)

I picked up a promising book at work yesterday, but after I got home and started reading it I realized it wasn't my thing.

On Kingdom Mountain by Howard Frank Mosher - He's an excellent writer, but I wasn't in the mood for quirky characters.

Most Recent Book I Gave Up On

I have several of these, too. My most recent, however, was Charlotte Gray. I had been reading a book set in the same time period and it was too depressing, so when I tried to read Charlotte Gray I was up to my eyeballs in dark and fear and privation and I just could not do it. I also gave up on the other book, which I can't remember anymore, but I know Anbo read it. Anyway, I'm sure I'll have many posts on this subject in the future.

Books I Gave Up On

I'm going to start a new series logging the books I've given up on. It seems this happens a lot to me. I'm not the type of reader who will read something just because it's there. If I don't like a book within the first 20 pages, I'm gone. Here are a couple of books I've recently given up on:

Daemon by Daniel Suarez - The main reason I quit this book was because of the excessive foul language and the horrid depiction of a gang rape. It made me nauseous.

Bone by Bone by Carol O'Connell - This novel was trying so hard to be gothic, creepy and mysterious, but it just seemed silly to me.

Have you given up on any books lately?

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Niesa has already heard me rave about this book, but I can rave for days about it to anyone who will listen. I loved this novel!
Set just after World War II in London, this story is told in a series of letters between the various characters. The main character is Juliet Ashton, a thirty-something writer of humorous war articles that have been compiled into a best-selling book. She's single and an orphan, having lost her parents when she was a teenager. While she's touring for her current book and struggling to find a topic for a new book, she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams who lives on the island of Guernsey. She begins a correspondence with him and with other members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and finds herself becoming increasingly infatuated with Guernsey and its inhabitants. She learns about what life was like for them during the war when they were occupied by the Germans and decides she wants to meet these incredible people in person. Leaving behind a new beau Juliet moves to Guernsey and starts a life there that is full of love, learning how to nurture and celebrating the history of Guernsey and its inhabitants.
The tone of this novel is upbeat and hopeful, even when it is addressing serious issues of deprivation and cruelty inflicted during the war. The characters are loveable and quirky, but also brave and steadfast. There is lots of humor to balance the horror and hardship.
This is one that I consider to be an instant classic! Make time to read it; you won't be disappointed.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Still Alice is a first novel by former neuroscientist Lisa Genova. Genova uses her background in brain development and functioning to insightfully and creatively craft a novel that explores the heartbreak of Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease (EOAD).
Dr. Alice Howland is a fifty-year-old professor of linguistics at Harvard University. She’s married with three grown children and has a very successful and fulfilling career. When she starts forgetting how to get home, missing classes, and overlooking deadlines she realizes that something is wrong. For months Alice tries to ignore her increasingly abnormal memory problems, but when she forgets to catch a flight to a conference she decides to see a doctor.
Eventually diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, Alice negotiates with her family and colleagues to maintain as normal a schedule and a life as she can. Genova uses each chapter to represent a month in Alice’s ordeal and this linear structure works effectively to show the reader how EOAD is a progressive disease. The characters are engaging and sympathetic and we come to feel forlorn along with Alice as she struggles with losing her career and status as a Harvard professor and forgetting her husband and children.
Still Alice is a thoughtful and simple novel that successfully portrays the nightmare of living with dementia. Genova’s skill at creating realistic characters is vital in showing that Alzheimer’s victims are not to be feared, but to be treated with love and patience.

Unshaken by Francine Rivers

This month for our genre study at work we read Christian fiction. I chose to read Francine Rivers because she didn't seem preachy and I also wanted to read a story based on the Bible. I ended up really liking this book and hope to read the entire Lineage of Grace series of which Unshaken is volume 3.
This novella centers on the story of Ruth and Naomi. Rivers really dramatizes the story and makes the characters come alive. I so admired Ruth and her courage, determination, faithfulness and devotion to Naomi. The tone of the book is serious and devout, but like I said, she is not preachy at all. The plot moves along at a crisp pace and had me turning the pages, even though I knew what happened. I so wanted to see Ruth happy that I couldn't stop reading until she was. I would recommend this if you are looking to be inspired and want to read about good and faithful people.

In the Coils of the Snake

I would like to revise an earlier opinion. I read only the first two books in the Hollow Kingdom trilogy when I wrote my last review. In the Coils of the Snake was the last book in the series and it totally redeemed it. This book captured the things I loved about By These Ten Bones. I cared about the characters. The emotions of the story drew me in and I even liked the ending. I notice that YA fantasy books are usually an interesting and thinly veiled social commentary. This book was no exception. All the books in this series were about misconceptions different cultures have about one another. It was especially effective in that one of the cultures was that of the goblins, who are actually kind, gentle, social, and honest in spite of their hideous appearance.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

I don't think I've mentioned before that I started a new book group at work that is focusing on science fiction and fantasy novels. You all know that this is not my favorite genre so it has been interesting reading one of these novels every month since August now. For January we read Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.
Lauren Olamina lives with her family in a neighborhood enclave surrounded by walls. The outside world is dangerous and unpredictable since the US society has collapsed. There are crazy drug addicts and people who are starving and living in shacks ready to pounce on the neighborhood at any sign of weakness. Lauren is a deep-thinker who has developed a religion she calls Earthseed and that she thinks will be the cure for the ills of the world. When she is finally forced to leave the compound she starts heading north, up the coast of California with several friends and people they pick up along the way. Their lives are threatened daily, but they manage to band together and form their own community in which Lauren begins to teach them about Earthseed.
This novel was very relevant to our society today. One of the major themes of the book is the idea of preparedness and of being realistic about what can happen to society. I enjoyed reading about how Lauren and her friends dealt with the danger and anxiety of living in chaos, but it was definitely disturbing. However, I think it was instructive to be reminded about how we should prepare for the worst but have hope for the best.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

So, this time around I didn't care for this novel. It is depressing and makes you hate and despise men. I don't really like Hardy's didactic writing style either. He pounds the reader over the head with how horrible religion and God are and, though I find his theories interesting, he really overdoes it. Tess as a character is intriguing and I find myself still thinking about her plight days after I've finished the book.
The Masterpiece Classic adaptation is fantastically depressing, but wonderful in its faithfulness to the feel of the book and the acting is great.
Now I am on to Wuthering Heights.

YA Fantasy

I told Niesa I loved this book by Clare B. Dunkle called By These Ten Bones. I was so excited that I checked out all her other books, but, alas, they were not as good. I read the Hollow Kingdom Trilogy about a goblin kingdom. The books were good, but I HATED the way they ended. She starts out with a set of main characters and then by the end of the book there's like seven. So you start reading and get an interest in these certain characters and then at the end it wraps up like 5 other people's stories so the main characters ending gets a small blurb, just like the others. I was like, "What the crap!" I wanted a detailed happy ending for the people I cared about and all it tells after all the story that lead up to it is "... and then they got married. The end." Terribly frustrating and disappointing. I also read the Shamer series by Lene Kaaberbol. These were excellent books. I really enjoyed the stories and the characters. They dealt a great deal with agency and manipulation of agency, which at times was heartbreaking and horrifying, and more than once I cried while reading them out of sheer frustration for the characters. Great story with an interesting concept of the Shamer.

Excited

Happy New Year everyone! I have a feeling it will be a good year for reading. I'm really excited that the new year is beginning with new episodes of Masterpiece Classic. Tonight, Tess of the D'Urbervilles begins. I read Tess when I was a teenager and loved it. I decided to read it again before I watch it. I have about a hundred pages to go and it is so tragic and depressing, but very thought-provoking. Poor Tess.

And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander

This novel is very similar to the previous one I blogged about, Silent in the Grave. As in Silent, And Only to Deceive centers on a young widow in the Victorian era who comes to believe that her husband was murdered. Lady Emily Ashton never really knew her husband, as he died in Africa several months after they were married. He was a great art collector, especially of Greek antiquities, and in an effort to know him better Emily develops an interest in and passion for art and literature (she reads The Iliad and takes ancient Greek lessons). Through her new art-world connections she begins to suspect that her husband was involved in something shady and with the help of her friends Cecile, Margaret and Ivy and of her love interest Colin Hargreaves, she gets to the bottom of the mystery. Was her husband really an art thief and involved in forgery? Or was he the victim of a forgery ring that spanned countries and classes? I really liked this mystery and I loved the art aspect of it. It stimulated my interest in Greek art and literature and I will definitely be reading the second book in the series, A Poisoned Season.

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

As this wonderful novel opens, Lady Julia Grey witnesses her husband's demise and becomes a young widow. After his death she is bound by the strictures of widowhood in the Victorian era and lives a quiet and undemanding life. Until she meets Nicholas Brisbane, a private inquiry agent who had been hired by her husband to investigate a series of death threats he received before he died. Convinced that her husband was murdered she hires Brisbane to help her discover the murderer. Of course Brisbane is a dark and mysterious man who she can't help but be attracted to. Misunderstandings and arguments ensue, making their relationship intriguing and infuriating for both of them. With the help of her large and eccentric family, Lady Julia navigates society and the disappointment of her marriage with wit, dignity and elegance. I really enjoyed this mystery/romance/historical novel and am already devouring the second book in the series. On a side note, I also very much enjoy Deanna Raybourn's blog. Check it out; it is just as satisfying as her novels.

Forgot to Post

I did finish a book last month. I read The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald for my genre study at work. We were concentrating on gentle fiction. The Bookshop is the story of Florence Green, a widow who lives in a small village on the north coast of England. She has no friends in town and is without children. Looking for some way to spend her time and talents she purchases an old building and opens a bookshop, the first ever in the village. She has opposition on many fronts and is not completely successful. This is a quiet and subtle read. The humor is very subdued and it is not really a "feel-good" book at all, but it works it's way under your skin and had me thinking about it for several days after I finished. I'm not sure I would recommend this to very many people because it isn't fast-paced or happy, but some readers may recognize its beauty.