|
|
 Ki’s husband and children died at the hands of harpys and her life has never been the same since. She cannot let them go. That is, until she meets a man named Vandien, who introduces conflict and companionship into her solitary life at a vivid contrast with her past encounters. On a trip which is reputed to be impossible over the mountains in winter, Ki is forced to confront the demons of her past and the impossible prospect of the future.
Megan Lindholm is another pen name of author Robin Hobb, whose works I absolutely adore. I believe this was written earlier and it certainly feels that way. It’s less epic and less of an intoxicating addiction. That doesn’t mean that it was bad. No, certainly not. This author just loves to torture her characters and Ki doesn’t escape at all. I think it may have hurt the story to have half of it told through flashbacks, but I’m not sure an adventure through snowy mountains would have been all that exciting on its own. It takes away some of the urgency for Ki to already be set in her ways and lonely, though of course we can still feel the heartrending pain of her loss in the writing. I guess what I’m trying to say here, and not saying very well, is that she writes better as Robin Hobb but this is still pretty good and I think I’d recommend it as a decent fantasy. It’s not going to be my favorite book ever, but I’d like to read the rest in the quartet.
 Today’s question: Here is a list of the main areas of Library Thing:
1. Home (http://www.librarything.com/, before you log in)
2. Home (once you log in, contains Your Home, Your Profile, Connections, Recommendations, Reviews, Statistics, Clouds, Gallery, Memes)
3. Profile (Recent activity, tags, comments, members with your books)
4. Your Library
5. Your Tags
6. Add Books
7. Talk
8. Groups
9. Local
10. Search
11. Zeitgeist (Stats, Top Lists)
12. Tools (Widgets, Store)
13. Blog
What area are you most familiar with? What area is your favorite? What area are you curious about? Are there any that you have not really looked at?
First of all, thanks to Marie at the Boston Bibliophile for hosting Tuesday Thingers for so long, and more thanks and a welcome to Wendi at Wendi’s Book Corner for picking it up! I’m looking forward to your great questions, Wendi.
I think I’m most familiar with Talk and my home page. I like the initial home page, my statistics, and my reviews. I also spend a lot of time on Talk, but I’m a bit of a lurker. I don’t talk much but I like to find out what’s going on. I don’t really look much at the widgets/store, not since I put mine on my sidebar. I also don’t really look at the zeitgeist too often. It doesn’t seem to change regularly, so I don’t feel compelled to check it very much. I think I’d like to spend more time with LT local, but it rarely has information about my specific location. I liked it when I was in Boston, but it hasn’t been useful since then.
 On the eve of the dissolution of monasteries, Matthew Shardlake is sent by Thomas Cromwell to a very troublesome monastery to work out who has murdered the last king’s commissioner. It is his duty to work out a tangle of secrets and lies in the midst of a religious controversy and struggles of his own.
At first, I wasn’t sure I was going to like this. It came highly recommended, but it didn’t start off with much promise. Trapped on a train with nothing else to read, though, I perservered and was rewarded. The mystery was intense and though I knew Shardlake wasn’t going to die, I wondered what would happen to all the rest of the characters. I also found the portrayal of Tudor England compelling. I don’t spend much time thinking about the dissolution of the monasteries because it makes me quite angry (all that beauty and history destroyed mainly on one man’s whim) but this book really shows a country in turmoil. People don’t know what to believe or what to do. It wasn’t a pleasant time to live, but it’s very interesting to read about. I think I’ll be reading the next in this series.
Buy Dissolution on Amazon today.
I’m finding it a little hard to believe that 2008 has only a few days left in it. Where does the time go? 2007 feels like both yesterday and a million years ago.
Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot this week. I have reviews scheduled for the next two weeks, so regardless of where I am or what I’m doing, they’ll be posting. I will probably get even further ahead. I have 7 books, all ARCs, that I’d like to finish before I head back to the UK on January 9th, so I’ll be reading up a storm over here. The rest of my ARCs are spaced far apart enough in time that I should be able to get in a lot of my own reading in the next few months. My book goal for 2009 is not to buy and to read my many, many TBRs. So far, I have read 181 books this year. If I can do the same (or meet my goal of 200) in 2009 without buying (is that even possible?) I’ll more than halve my TBR pile and get it back into a manageable state. Here’s hoping!
Yesterday I finished off both American Buffalo by Steven Rinella and Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Not surprisingly, I enjoyed the second one a lot more than the first. Reviews for them both will be coming in January. I also took a little trip back to the past last week by reading Into the Land of the Unicorns and the sequel Song of the Wanderer by Bruce Coville. I loved the first one when I was little – I think I was 8 when I got it – and I always wondered what happened next. Coville didn’t write Song of the Wanderer until I was 13 and needless to say, it flew over my radar until I got curious this year. Then I was lucky enough to find it in a used bookstore for 50 cents! I really enjoyed it but I’m a little dismayed to discover that it doesn’t finish the story, and neither does the 3rd volume published this year (9 years after Song!). By the time he writes number four, I might have children of my own! What a scary thought.
Today, I’m starting Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki. I think this book came out a while ago as I can’t actually remember reading any reviews on it, but I received a review copy while I was gone, so review it I will. I’m not sure what’s next up, but I hope I get to it today!
Thanks for stopping by and see you next week in 2009!
 Sophie Beckett is the illegitimate daughter of the earl of Penwood and that fact has marred her entire life. Raised by servants in a life of privilege until her father’s untimely death, Sophie is brutally cast down into the world of the servants by her stepmother, who hates her. One day, Sophie’s stepmother and stepsisters head off to a ball at the Bridgertons’. Knowing how much she wants to go to this ball, the servants conspire to help her attend. There, she meets Benedict Bridgerton and sparks fly, but she has to leave at the stroke of midnight. Benedict, enchanted, fails to find her, until they meet again several years later. Sophie has fled her stepfamily and taken a service job at a home where Benedict attends a party. He doesn’t recognize her, but takes her to his cottage with him when she is forced to leave her job, and unsurprisingly, sparks fly once again.
As you can tell, this is a retelling of the ever-popular Cinderella story, but goes beyond the typical legend. Benedict does not find her when he looks for her, and instead falls in love with her a second time, as a servant. The class struggle in Regency Britain is bitterly visible here; Sophie’s bastardy blemishes her entire life as her stepmother hides her inheritance and thus does not allow her to be a lady. She can’t even dream of marrying Benedict as a simple servant. That doesn’t stop this couple, though, as the Bridgerton family isn’t your typical aristocratic family, and I loved the way it all turned out in the end.
Naturally, this is darker than the first two novels in the Bridgerton series, but if possible, I loved it even more. I loved what it revealed about society and I grew very attached to these two in particular. In addition to Sophie’s reduced status, Benedict struggles with his identity and disappearing within his large family. He comes into his own here in making his own family rather than just vanishing behind his many brothers and sisters. Quinn always deals with these real issues in her romance novels, making them deeper than your average bodice ripper (and there isn’t much bodice ripping here, either, I think just one scene, so if that’s what you’re looking for, look elsewhere!).
Buy An Offer From a Gentleman on Amazon today.
Wishing you and your family a wonderful holiday and a great year ahead! Thank you for helping to make 2008 a good one for me. I’m grateful to have met all of you and I’m looking forward to returning and improving Medieval Bookworm in 2009!
 After enduring a severely difficult childhood, Merripen, real name Kev, is left for dead until the Hathaways find him and take him in. He finds a sort of home with them, though his awareness of his past prevents him from engaging fully as a son of the family. Unfortunately for him, however, he has loved Winnifred Hathaway since the first moment he saw her, and she is the reason he stayed with the family in the first place. He can never tell her, though, since a worthless gypsy is not who she deserves. Win, weak from an illness, knows that she can’t show Kev how she feels about him until she gets well, but that just adds to her determination to finally win the man she’s loved for so much of her life and show him that he is worthy of her after all.
I loved this book. It’s so emotionally charged and their relationship is so tortured that I just couldn’t look away from the page. Kev is again a tortured hero, but in a such a realistic way. He was treated like he was dirt for his entire childhood and those beliefs have been driven into him. It’s not a surprise that he considers himself unworthy of Win, but also that he just can’t stay away. She’s the perfect antidote for his harsh upbringing with her gentle but determined ways. Watching them overcome the barriers between them was fascinating, compelling, and moving. I also loved the flashes back to their youth together and the development of their relationship, and there is plenty of development here. I couldn’t put this book down and I read it long after I should have been asleep. Definitely, definitely recommended. This is what romance should be. And now I’m really looking forward to this author’s other work!
Buy Seduce Me at Sunrise on Amazon today.
Today’s question: Holiday gift-giving. Do you give books for the holidays? Did you participate in LT’s SantaThing, either this year or last, or in other blogging gift exchanges? Were you happy with what you received?
I don’t normally give books for the holiday, but this year my friends are getting them. I can’t afford much more than that and no one in my family really likes books, so it’s a bit of a struggle. And that’s why I didn’t join up to buy books for the holidays – no one in my family will read them even if I buy them.
I did not participate in the book bloggers’ exchange simply because of my position in the UK. I can’t afford to send a gift to the US and since I’ve spent time at 3 different addresses this month, I wasn’t even sure where to ask for mine to be sent. I’m hoping my life next Christmas will be more settled and that I’ll be making at least a little money. I’ll be participating if that is the case. I did participate in SantaThing because I knew I’d be home and I figured that I spent very little over my first term in grad school and I could treat myself.
Well, that was before I got an email informing me that my student loan payments were overdue. I’m still in school and I thought my payments were deferred, but apparently something went wrong. I’ve been advised to pay them and send in the deferment applications ASAP, but this has now put me out of a lot of money I didn’t expect to lose when I don’t have an income. So, regretting that choice, but it’s a bit late now – luckily my parents have agreed to give me back $25 and count it as part of my gift. I’m not totally destitute but I really need a part-time job when I get back!
I also participated in SantaThing last year. I got one book I liked and wanted, but the second one I already owned, so I exchanged it at the bookstore. I still haven’t read what I exchanged it for, unfortunately, but my Santa made good choices and I was pleased. This year’s gift hasn’t arrived yet, but according to LT it should be here by tomorrow. I hope I’ll be happy with what my new Santa has chosen!
 Beautiful Kitty Fane is unhappy in her marriage to Sir Walter Fane and resorts to an affair to satisfy her need for a more potent love. When Walter finds out about the affair, he exiles them both to help with a cholera outbreak in a remote part of China. Starved of the society in which she has spent her entire life, Kitty learns who she really is and what love is in this vacuum, changing and growing dramatically.
At first, I didn’t like Kitty. She is silly and irritating with Charlie and I couldn’t imagine anyone ever leaving their wife for her, let alone marrying her. She trapped herself in that loveless marriage and her needs are entirely her own fault. I didn’t believe that she deserved to die of cholera as it seemed her husband wanted her to, but I did think she deserved punishment. I really appreciated how she grew as a character when she was encountered with real suffering and need, though, and how she came to appreciate her husband through other people’s eyes. It was easy to see how society’s expectations and entertainments molded her character and how she had to break that mold once she was exposed to this vastly different place.
I was also fascinated by the depiction of the British empire’s distant regions. The book may be dated, but I appreciated the perspective, particularly the difference between the city and the country in China.
I think this is very worth a read and I definitely recommend it.
Buy The Painted Veil on Amazon.
Has anyone seen this movie, by the way? Is it any good? I’ve had it saved on the TiVo at my parents’ for months.
Despite the snow, I arrived at my parents’ home yesterday after a heavily delayed and exhausting day of traveling. Believe me, I’m glad to have waiting in the airport over with, though I’m going to be there again in three weeks.
I had some time to read on the flight, which was probably the journey’s only redeeming feature. I finished The Concubine of Shanghai, a review book that was taking me forever to read. The story had merit, but the writing or translation was not up to par and made it very difficult to read quickly. I spent nearly all week on it, so I’m glad to have it finished. My reading is slowing greatly in December; work on my essay and lots of time with my fiance are to blame, but those are both worthy causes. And beyond that, I’m currently reading book number 175, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, which means I’ll be reaching my goal of books read for the year! I’ve set 2009’s goal to 200, although I’m not sure I’ll actually be capable of reading that many. Worth a shot though.
Speaking of The Glass Castle, I’m really enjoying it. It’s finally one of my own books, so my TBR pile is going down a little bit, and it’s a very oddly absorbing story. These kids had the weirdest and most unpredictable life, but it seems obvious that their parents loved them and they weren’t necessarily all that unhappy. I’ll leave the rest for the review, though.
Finally, an apology for being so out of it with my blog this last month. I’ve had a lot to do and haven’t been at the computer all that much. I want to devote more attention to it and everyone else’s blogs in 2009, though, after the holiday season is over. I’m not sure how often I will be here in the next couple of weeks, so I thought I’d say that now. My reviews will continue to post up until the New Year thanks to playing a bit of catch-up in my free time, but I may not be at this blog much. I can say I’ll be reading the 37 new ARCs I discovered when I got home though …
Time has been at a premium for me this month. What about you? Are you keeping up with your blogging and reviewing?
|
|
Recent Comments