Reviews

Reading, Reviews

So Long, January

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January is a long month. There’s just no denying it. I’m not a fan, but I do appreciate the many opportunities to cozy up with a book, because winter is for reading. Here’s a “quick” overview of what I read in the past month.

The Firebird (The Slains, #2)The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley is my only venture into modern literature in January. It’s another one of those historical novels framed by present day characters and settings. The brief synopsis got me interested:

“Nicola Marter was born with a gift. When she touches an object, she sometimes glimpses those who have owned it before. When a woman arrives with a small wooden carving at the gallery Nicola works at, she can see the object’s history and knows that it was named after the Firebird—the mythical creature from an old Russian fable.

Compelled to know more, Nicola follows a young girl named Anna into the past who leads her on a quest through the glittering backdrops of the Jacobites and Russian courts, unearthing a tale of love, courage, and redemption.” -goodreads.com

If you’re a fan of historical fiction, this book is for you. The historical setting and characters are very lifelike. I learned a lot about the early 1700s in Europe when Jacobites fought for James Stewart to be on the throne and Russia was coming out of the dark ages. The bits about Peter The Great and how St. Petersburg was built were especially fascinating. The modern characters and settings were so unnecessary, though. I didn’t enjoy the present day main character, Nicola, and her psychokinetic powers, and I especially didn’t appreciate her love interest. The historical main character, Anna, and the cast of historical characters around her were likeable, well-rounded, and much more lifelike. I was especially moved by the little girl Anna and her early history (it made me want to hug my little girl tight). All in all, it was a decent book and pretty clean minus one brief encounter. But frankly, I miss the days when novels didn’t cater to this ADD society and stuck with a plot line for the whole book. I think I’m in the minority on that, though.

Katherine Wentworth (Katherine, #1)That foray into literature from the last year/last 80 years was short lived, and I went right back to my newly discovered D.E. Stevenson to read Mrs. Tim Gets A Job and Katherine Wentworth. For a complete review on D.E. Stevenson the post, Lost in D.E. Stevenson. I just love her writing. I’m finding her main characters can get a little redundant – they are so similar to one another from book to book, minus the Miss Buncle books – but I like them all so that eases the pain of repetition. It’s almost become comforting because I know I’ll find a friend-like protagonist when I read Stevenson. And it turns out she’s a cousin of THE Robert Louis Stevenson. She just gets cooler and cooler.

I finished The Unwired Mom at the beginning of the month. More on that will come in the next few days when I post an update on The 7 Challenge.

Now I’m in middle of The Prayer Box and I just hit that wonderful moment in a reader’s life when every single book I’ve requested from the library in the last three months comes in on the same day. I’m not going to be sleeping much for the next two weeks, I guess. On top of that, the Olympics start this weekend. I loooove the Olympics. Sleep, you will just have to wait.

I hope your winter reading has been expanding your world and feeding your soul. Always feel free to share what you’re reading with me in the comments!

 

Reviews

Lost in D.E. Stevenson

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Thanks to the blog The Captive Reader, I have been completely lost in the works of D. E. Stevenson (Dorothy Emily Stevenson, 1892-1973) since Christmas. She is the perfect writer to get me through the winter months, with her light wit, cleverly rendered characters, and cozy English village settings. Stevenson clearly idolized Jane Austen–she refers to Austen in every book I’ve read so far– and took notes from Austen on how to develop unique yet familiar characters. Her works are similar to some of her contemporary British authors (Barbara Pym, Dodie Smith, P.G. Wodehouse, etc.), but they avoid the dismal endings so often chosen by mid-century authors. Stevenson is a fan of tying up books neatly at the end, which I appreciate even as I am aware that tidy endings are not considered very artistic in this day and age. Why not? I have no idea. Books don’t have to be open-ended like “real life” to be art, people. But I digress.

Mrs Tim Of The Regiment (Bloomsbury Group)Stevenson published over 40 novels between 1923-1970. Her works are becoming popular again thanks to Persephone Books‘ re-publishing three of her works since 2009. I started with Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, which is written as the diary of a woman married to a soldier in 1935. Hester (Mrs. Tim) is a very likable character, the kind you’d think would make a great friend, and the characters around her are all amusing. The book isn’t very plot driven, but more about character development. It was written at the request of one of Stevenson’s friend’s whose daughters was going to marry a British soldier. Stevenson stated that she wrote it as an autobiographical piece mixed with fictional characters and plot, so it is an interesting piece of social study at the same time that it is a light novel. I found the last third of it to be rather slow, but enjoyed it over all.

Miss Buncle's Book Miss Buncle’s Book is my favorite so far. It follows the tale of a poor spinster in a small English country village who turns to writing to make ends meet. The only problem is she has no imagination, so she writes a novel based entirely on the people of her own neighborhood. Miss Buncle’s book wreaks havoc on the peace of her neighbors when the village begins to read it. I loved this book! It is clever and flows well from beginning to end. The characters are delightful and there is a more sustainable plot in it than any of the other Stevenson books I’ve read thus far. While Mrs. Tim of the Regiment is a book I’d definitely recommend, if you’re only going to read one Stevenson, make it Miss Buncle’s Book. I think the sequel, Miss Buncle Married, is also worth a read if you enjoy Miss Buncle’s Book, though it is not as well crafted as the first book in the series.

I’m now in the midst of Mrs. Tim Gets A Job, which is enjoyable because it’s about Mrs. Tim, but it’s my least favorite Stevenson so far. However, saying it’s my least favorite Stevenson still puts it miles ahead of most of the current books I’ve picked up in the last six months. If you like “vintage” novels and need a good winter read, several of Stevenson’s books are available on Kindle or Nook. And of course, there’s always the library. Sadly, my local library doesn’t have many of Stevenson’s books and I ended up buying two of them (gasp!) on my Nook.

What have you been reading to keep sane through these cold winter months?

Reviews

Letters from Skye: A Review

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Some you already know that I love an epistolary novel. I talked about my favorites a few months ago in Letters That Make Books. I recently came across Letters from Skye, a novel by Jessica Brockmole, made up of letters from two different couples in two different wars. Here’s the summary from Goodreads.com:

Letters from SkyeA sweeping story told in letters, spanning two continents and two world wars, Jessica Brockmole’s atmospheric debut novel captures the indelible ways that people fall in love, and celebrates the power of the written word to stir the heart.

March 1912: Twenty-four-year-old Elspeth Dunn, a published poet, has never seen the world beyond her home on Scotland’s remote Isle of Skye. So she is astonished when her first fan letter arrives, from a college student, David Graham, in far-away America. As the two strike up a correspondence—sharing their favorite books, wildest hopes, and deepest secrets—their exchanges blossom into friendship, and eventually into love. But as World War I engulfs Europe and David volunteers as an ambulance driver on the Western front, Elspeth can only wait for him on Skye, hoping he’ll survive.

June 1940: At the start of World War II, Elspeth’s daughter, Margaret, has fallen for a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Her mother warns her against seeking love in wartime, an admonition Margaret doesn’t understand. Then, after a bomb rocks Elspeth’s house, and letters that were hidden in a wall come raining down, Elspeth disappears. Only a single letter remains as a clue to Elspeth’s whereabouts. As Margaret sets out to discover where her mother has gone, she must also face the truth of what happened to her family long ago.

I typically try to avoid books that are divided between two time periods, but that’s getting harder to do! Uncovering the past is a current obsession in literature. The time period of this book was similar to Kate Morton’s The Secret Keeper, but the plot was not as full and well developed. Over all, Letters from Skye was middling to not all that great. I loved the setting of the Island of Skye, off of the coast of Scotland, but more description would have really enriched the book. The characters didn’t appeal to me much. The main character, Elspeth, is intriguing and likable at first. She has an Emily Bronte vibe to her. Her choices throughout the book baffled me, though. Her daughter Margaret is more of a Nancy Drew. She sometimes made me think “give me a break with the gumption thing, will you?” The male main character, David, is…erm…not my type. If you have read this book already, you know what I mean when I say, “Team Iain!” For the most part, I wished the characters of the first World War would just get out of their own tangled way.

But beyond the characters, the part about this book that brought it down most for me was the theme of adultery. I know, I know, how Puritan is it to throw out the scarlet letter and hate on it. But this book makes an extramarital affair look mostly lovely, which seems convoluted to me. I know life isn’t black and white, I know the human mind can justify all kinds of things, but in the lives of some of my friends currently and since high school, I have only seen the ugly truth that extramarital affairs cause wreckage. Have I seen good come out of these situations? Yes, sometimes, but the good is slow to come and comes with a great deal of pain. Though this book doesn’t completely ignore the heartache of an affair, it does skim over it way more than reality does.

But in all honesty, I don’t think I would have loved this book with or without the adultery theme. There was just something missing in the plot and the characters. Beautiful cover, though. =)

If you enjoy books made up of letters exchanged between characters, I’d recommend The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or  84, Charing Cross Road over Letters from Skye.

Children's Books, Reading, Reviews, Top Ten Tuesday, Young Adult

A Book for Your Winter TBR List: The Secret of the Ruby Ring

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The Secret of the Ruby RingHoliday break is soon to begin for kids, and hopefully that means you’re thinking of some great books that will encourage you and your kids to have fun reading while taking a break from the required reading of school and every day life. Today I’m sharing about a book that I absolutely loved as a young girl–I think kids ages 8-92 should put this on their Winter To Be Read list. This book, The Secret of the Ruby Ring, by Yvonne MacGrory,  is one I picked up on a weekly library trip at age ten, when our local library’s children section had a castle dungeon feel and every book I picked up was a treasure. Man, I miss those days. I haven’t thought about the book in ages, though I loved it so much, but a few days ago when my daughter asked for a bed time story, the plot of this book popped into my head and I thought, “Gasp- perfect!” Here’s the summary from Goodreads.com:

Lucy, a rather spoiled almost-eleven-year-old, gets a very special birthday present from her grandmother. This gift, a star ruby ring, has been passed down for generations through Lucy’s family. The evening before her birthday, Lucy accidentally discovers the magical secret of the ring: The secret of this Ruby Ring is that two wishes it can bring.

Twisting the ring and making her first wish, Lucy finds herself transported to a far away time, that of Ireland in 1885, a time of unrest, evictions, and boycotting. At first, Lucy is intrigued by Langley Castle and its inhabitants, but soon she misses her family and friends, his grandmother the only real connection is now living across town with her home care taker from https://www.careshyft.com/san-antonio/. When she decides to use her second wish to go home, Lucy discovers that the ring has disappeared.

Can Lucy convince young Robert that she is from another age? Will he help her to retrieve the ruby ring, or will Lucy be trapped forever in a bygone age?

Now, before you roll your eyes and say, “time travel again, puhlease,” let me tell you that this book had a profound positive effect on me at age ten. I thought the story was magical (I think I read it twice before I returned it to the library), but I also thought the message applied to me: you’re not put on this earth to be a princess and have the world revolve around you. It’s pretty cool when a book delivers a message so clearly, a ten-year-old girl can take it to heart. And that message is one our Disney princess culture girls need to hear, often and over and over again. Actually, it’s one I need to hear pretty often, too, based on my Downton Abbey envy. One of the greatest things about this book  is that when I recently picked it up to read as an adult, I still loved it. The characters were so personable and the plot was perfectly paced between action and insight into Lucy’s character. Though it never hit the best seller list in the U.S., it won Children’s Book of the Year in Ireland in 1994 and really reads like a classic. This would be a great book for young girls all the way to  grown ladies to read over Christmas break. I wish I could read it for the first time with you.

This post is my contribution to the Top Ten Tuesday theme, Winter Reading List, over at the awesome blog, The Broke and the Bookish. Go on over to the B&B blog to see all the other winter reading lists that book lovers are putting together today. And thanks for stopping by Mia The Reader, too! Leave a comment on what your favorite Winter read is. I’m always looking for a great read to add to my TBR list. 

Reading, Reviews

Longbourn: A Review

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LongbournOver the weekend, in a moment of what must have been insanity and desperation for reading material, I read some glowing reviews of Longbourn by Jo Baker and decided to download it from my library to read on my Nook. Reading novels based on Pride and Prejudice is a cardinal reading sin in my reading philosophy (i.e. I hates them), but like I said, moment of insanity.

At the beginning, I liked how Baker set the scene of Longbourn, the Bennet family’s country home. I could almost see the flocks of blackbirds flying up from the misty farm fields in the early summer morning when the servants rose. From what I could tell, the details of the life of a servant in that time period seemed accurate, and were very  interesting. I liked the characters Baker created to make the Upstairs, Downstairs version of of P&P. And then, it all went south. Suddenly, it felt like what is a classic, beautiful book was being cast in a crude light. The parts when the actual Bennet family was featured pulled them into much darker roles than Jane Austen wrote for them, save Mary, Mr. Collins (who actually may invoke some sympathy in this novel), and Jane.The account of the main character, Sarah, a housemaid/lady’s maid, became more carnal as the book went on. The third volume that follows the history of the Bennet’s manservant is gory and terrifying to me, a reader who likes Victorian novels best of all and did not expect a  war memoir wherein all the soldiers were absolute beasts.

I’m planning on shunning all memory of Longbourn in hopes that my original and much more deeply embedded thoughts on P&P will remain untainted, but I’m worried there may be remnants. It makes me angry that (a) I let myself read this book and (b) that writers feel the need to takes something original from long ago and “modernize” it. I realize this is a matter of reader opinion and everyone has their own likes and dislikes when it comes to novels. Still, if you love Pride and Prejudice, spare yourself and keep your distance from Longbourn. 

And please note that I do not enjoy looking at an author’s work and judging it harshly. If it weren’t for the way Baker presents Pride and Prejudice, I would probably like her writing style (with fewer gory details). I applaud her for writing about what she loves and, at least to some degree, admire anyone who creates a novel worthy of being published. I’m sorry I can’t give her work a more favorable review this time. Fortunately, I doubt she really minds what I say anyway. =)