|
|
 Why am I posting this so late, you may ask? It’s 10:45 pm on my side of the pond. Well, on Saturday my fiance decided to surprise me by buying me the Sims 3. He left just a few hours ago and after making up notes for Thursday’s presentation, I have been playing it constantly. I don’t normally do video game reviews, but it might be worth writing up what I think of this one, and perhaps how much better this version is than the previous two. It will all become normal once I’ve played for long enough but for now, I am already completely obsessed!
 I haven’t been neglecting my reading too much, though. On Friday night I managed to get more than halfway through The Lieutenant’s Lover by Harry Bingham. I’ve started a new program to shrink my TBR pile. Whenever I can’t decide what book to read, which is often, I’m going to read the book that I’ve had for the longest. As most of you know, many of my books are at my parents’ house, so I have some very old ones hanging around, but I’ve had this one for about two years and two months. I got it for £1 the first time I studied abroad in England, the spring semester of my junior year of college. It’s about a couple, Misha and Tonya, who fall in love just after the start of the Russian Revolution. He is an aristocrat and she is a peasant, so after he gets conscripted in the Red Army, he flees Russia, while she stays behind. She plans to follow him, but as so often happens, her life gets in the way. The rest of the book appears to be about their separate lives afterwards and their struggle to get back together 25 years later. As I often find with books that were from this store, which has now closed, it’s a surprisingly good, fast read. I hope to finish it tomorrow morning while volunteering at York Minster Library.
Ideally, I’d like to start a system that rotates. Review book, TBR book, library book, repeat. I know that once I start imposing restrictions on myself, however, that I will internally “rebel”. Does anyone else have this problem? I like to make lists, think about plans for reading, but when it comes down to it I’m a moody reader and I don’t like to follow my own lists. This is why I always, always fail challenges, unless they are solely determined by the number of books I can complete.
How was your weekend? Anything exciting planned for the week ahead? I’m off to go continue satisfying my newest addiction!
 On Shrove Tuesday, 1672, in Langenburg, Germany, a young woman by the name of Eva Kustner brought a festive cake to her neighbor, Anna Fessler. Anna had recently given birth and as such, was still in delicate health, watched over by two other women constantly. Anna ate one of Eva’s cakes, but the rest were thrown away. Later that night, Anna began having convulsions and died. In the investigation that followed, blame fell on Anna Schmieg, Eva’s mother and the wife of the miller. Anna Schmieg had never been liked by her neighbors but had instead a reputation for alcoholism, nasty language, and cursing. It isn’t a stretch for them to accuse her of witchcraft and poisoning and throw her in prison. In this enlightening work of micro-history, Thomas Robisheaux explores Anna’s trial and sentencing as well as the larger political climate to give us a deeper look at accusations of witchcraft, the uncertain state of Germany after the Thirty Years’ War, and peasant culture in the late seventeenth century.
The broad concept of this book is fascinating. I had no idea that using one event to explore outlying themes was called micro-history but I love it. The trial of Anna Schmieg, as well as those of her daughter, husband, and fellow witches in other communities, was the focal point of this work, but so many interesting ideas are carefully considered. First, we are taught a little about village life. The miller was, naturally, an essential for every village, but was also rarely liked by townspeople. He could withhold grain, charge too much, or beef up his grain with sawdust and no one would ever know. He was also frequently richer than the average peasant. So suspicion falling on the miller’s wife, especially given Anna’s reputation and the coincidence of the cakes, is easily understood.
We also explore the reasons why Anna was found guilty and the potential thought process going through the heads of all the men involved, from the judge to the doctor who examined Anna Fessler’s body to the university authorities who were pulled in to pass judgement. This is all explained very carefully and I never felt lost or confused. Robisheaux explains everything he mentions and I felt that I learned a lot here about legal process, Protestantism and medical theory. It’s fascinating why people who had never seen Anna Fessler’s body decided that she’d died of arsenic poisoning and more still how the constant questions broke both Anna Schmieg and her daughter, horrible as that is, into confessing.
All of this, naturally, is wrapped up in the political struggles of The Holy Roman Empire and particular folk beliefs which caused the townspeople to react as they did. To some extent witchcraft was part of their culture and that made it even easier to single out those whose actions may have seemed entirely ordinary otherwise. With recent devastation behind them and threats on the horizon, people wanted someone to blame. Anna Schmieg was their scapegoat.
Never once does Thomas Robisheaux tell us outright his theory. Instead, he provides us with the evidence and allows us to draw our own conclusions. He doesn’t manipulate the evidence, but lays out the facts in a way that is understandable and interesting. There is no villainizing. Clearly, Anna Schmieg was not a witch, but she may have poisoned the cakes; they may have been intended for someone else, however, and not Anna Fessler. There are theories, but Robisheaux doesn’t force them on his reader. Instead we’re left with the feeling that we’ve learned something and, even better, that we want to learn more.
Available via IndieBound, Powell’s, Amazon, and Amazon UK.
 This dual narrative alternates between Connie Goodwin, a 20th century PhD candidate in history searching for that elusive beast, an original primary source, and the story of a peculiar line of women in 17th and 18th century Salem who are accused of witchcraft, perhaps not entirely without basis. Connie’s life is about little other than history; she is thrilled when she stumbles on clues towards what may be a lost Salem witch. As she makes friends – perhaps more than friends – with attractive restorer Sam, digs around in archives, and attempts to clean her grandmother’s colonial house, Connie realizes that there are larger forces at work than just her search for the physick book of Deliverance Dane.
I’m not sure what I was expecting when I picked this up, but I certainly got more than that! I loved this book. I could relate to Connie very, very well. She’s a PhD student and I’m only a lowly MA student, but much of our experience and love for history is very similar. I loved reading about her research, poking through archives full of that old book smell, and her discoveries. I haven’t been able to poke through archives on my own yet but I can’t wait for an excuse! Anyway, being able to relate to the protagonist so well made this book for me.
I also found the idea very clever. We’re so caught up in the fact that there weren’t witches at Salem that we miss out on the fun of pretending that there were, and moreover that magic exists. I loved this idea and I found the way it was executed very well done; it fits with what I know of the Salem witch trials but still provides something new and different.
As far as the villain goes, I figured that out, but I enjoyed the journey to Connie’s discovery. Her relationship with her mother was particularly interesting; she seems to be able to “see” her mother over the phone without even realizing that she’s doing it or that it’s unusual. That was the first hint I had regarding any abilities. I also liked the way things developed between them over time. I loved the character of Sam, who restores old buildings for a living. Can I have his job? Someone please say yes.
Anyway, I’m doing a very sorry job of expressing how much I liked this book! Its 350+ pages flew by. I had dreams about it. I thought it was well told, fast paced, engrossing, and interesting. If I had to pick one thing I didn’t like, it was a few of the longer flashbacks; some of the characters felt like their stories had already been told. Regardless, I liked Deliverance, and I didn’t mind when we heard about her or her daughter.
I would definitely recommend this book. It works as historical fiction but it also works as a regular novel. I loved reading it and maybe you would too.
Available via IndieBound, Powell’s, Amazon, and Amazon UK.
 Miss Claudia Martin, aged thirty-something and well on the shelf, has made a life for herself by running a girls’ school in Bath, work that is fulfilling and thoroughly enjoyable. When the Marquess of Attingsborough appears at her school and offers to escort her and her two charges to London for their employment interviews, the stern Claudia is astonished and disapproving. She can handle herself very well, after all, and does not need his help. What she needs, however, is far different from what she’d like, a lesson Claudia very much enjoys learning.
This one started out slow, but very soon I could see why people love Mary Balogh. This book is heartbreakingly sweet. I could feel these characters fall in love with each other and I completely fell in love with them, too. Claudia is determined, stubborn, and ridiculously smart; falling in love doesn’t change her but augments her personality in wonderful ways. She’s stern for a reason and when we learn that reason, it’s much easier to feel for her and cheer for her to go after what she really wants.
As for the marquess, Joseph, he’s endearing all on his own. His love for his blind daughter and his discovery that he doesn’t have to hide who he loves or why is a touching part of the story on its own. He is so used to the rigid expectations of society that he never, ever thinks about questioning them until Claudia begins to question him. After all, she has shrugged off all expectations to become a remarkably successful woman; surely Joseph can do the same when it comes to a love for his daughter and moreover, a love for this woman.
Overall, if you’re looking for an emotional, heartening romance that makes you feel emotions and not just read about them happening, I recommend this. There isn’t much plot involved, but it’s hard to care. Worth noting, however, that this is the last in the “Simply” series about teachers at Miss Martin’s school. I have not read the first three, but I’m sure they would have only enhanced my enjoyment of this one.
Buy Simply Perfect on Amazon.
 “This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
- The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
- The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Shaffer and Annie Barrows
- Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery
- Daughter of the Forest, Juliet Marillier
- Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
- The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley
- Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
- The Sunne in Splendour, Sharon Kay Penman
- A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
- Ship of Magic, Robin Hobb
- Silent in the Grave, Deanna Raybourn
- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
- Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev
Well, that wasn’t as hard as I expected. I have a lot of favorite books. If it’s the first in a series, you can probably figure out that I love the rest of the series too. These are all books that astonished me, captivated me, that I fell absolutely in love with and wanted to start over again right that second. I know they will always stay with me because I will always have a copy and when I want a comforting reread, I will choose one of these books.
This list has also shown me that an absurd number of my favorite books are fantasy and I really should just deal with the fact that they are chunksters and read them anyway. I haven’t fallen in love with a book in a long time and I’m totally ready to do so. It’s May and it hasn’t happened that special way yet.
 When Skaaha’s mother dies in a chariot accident, her entire life changes. Instead of being the prized daughters of a leading warrior queen, Skaaha and her sister are separated, sent off with their fathers to learn trades. Skaaha has never met her father before but quickly grows to like him and to enjoy forging. As she grows to maturity, she begins to suspect irregularities in her mother’s death and falls in love with a man who is not entirely suitable. After Skaaha’s first Beltane, she realizes that she must find the answers and become a warrior to match her greatest enemies.
Though Warrior Daughter isn’t massive at under 500 pages, it feels epic in scope. I loved learning about the 2000-year-old Celtic world that Skaaha inhabited. Her character is based on the legendary Scathach, one of the many mythical figures in the Ulster cycle, as a young woman. The society is matriarchal; women are warriors, leaders, and free to choose as many husbands as they’d like. The gods are women. Pregnant women are essentially worshipped and looked up to. I’m thinking this doesn’t sound so bad!
Of course, it’s not so easy for Skaaha. She has the blood of the gods running through her veins thanks to her mother, but that only makes her life harder as others envy her. Skaaha grows quite strong throughout the novel, growing and changing as she faces new obstacles constantly. I really liked her. I suspected who was behind much of the conflict in the novel – it’s really quite obvious from the beginning – and I was firmly on Skaaha’s side throughout the novel.
Possibly the only warning I might give to this novel is that it’s quite graphic. There is a violent rape and the characters have a lot of sex with each other. The rape in particular was extremely difficult for me to read, as I imagine it would be for any woman, but it did have bearing on the plot, as did much of the other graphic scenes. Everything, whether scarring or healing, furthers the development of Skaaha’s character, so in that sense I don’t think I would call it gratuitious, but I could have done without so many details.
After reading Warrior Daughter, I find that I’d love to learn more about the Celtic culture which the author researched and recreated. Her author’s note only further piqued my interest, especially when she discussed archaeological discoveries and comparisons she drew in order to make this society as close as possible to the real one. I found it fascinating and I can’t wait to do some of my own research.
This is a fantastic historical novel. While not for everyone, I was absorbed in the story and enjoyed my time with it greatly. I would definitely recommend it and I’m eager to read Janet Paisley’s first novel.
Warrior Daughter is available from Amazon UK.
 Betsy Taylor, queen of the vampires, has to bring the body of her dead werewolf friend Antonia back to her pack. Unfortunately, the pack resides on Cape Cod, a very dangerous place for a vampire queen, especially when that pack not only believes she got one of their own killed, but is determined to forget that they pushed Antonia out in the first place. With her husband, Sinclair, and adopted baby/half-brother BabyJon in tow, she sets off to confront the werewolves. Meanwhile, her sister, who happens to be the daughter of the devil, has started to go a little crazy. How much can Betsy deal with?
This has got to be one of the fluffiest books I have ever read, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s ridiculous and it knows that it’s ridiculous. Betsy is not only queen of the vampires, but she’s obsessed with shoes! And shopping! Honestly, normally that is not my taste, but the book contains very little mention of those besides other characters teasing Betsy about her obsessions. In fact, I laughed throughout most of this book. Between Betsy’s assistant, who uses ridiculous acronyms in his emails to her, her sister’s crazy devil worshipping followers, and people’s reactions after Betsy rises from the dead (apparently vampire queens can do this), I had so much fun.
This was also an interesting test for me. I hadn’t read any of the other books in the series when I got this one and I didn’t have time or money to buy and read the preceding seven, so I more or less jumped right in. I was curious to see how well I would get on with the story having little to no knowledge of everything that had come before. There was a recap in the beginning of the book which quickly filled me in on the background information. This means I have been a little spoiled for all the preceding books, but perhaps more importantly I now want to read them just because sometimes we all need a laugh. I think having read all of the preceding books may have helped me feel a little more strongly for the characters – I’d just love to read how Betsy and Sinclair fell in love – but it certainly didn’t hinder my enjoyment.
This is what I’d call urban fantasy lite. Don’t read it if you’re looking to think and don’t read it if you can’t deal with supernatural beings. Read it if you’re looking to laugh and have a fun afternoon in a world that has a few more species than our own. This is an ideal airplane read, especially given its short length, although you might get a few funny looks when you start giggling! I’ll certainly happily pick up more of this series and save them for when I need a break.
Undead and Unwelcome is available from Amazon and Amazon UK.
Amazingly, I read the exact same number of books in May as I did in April, which is 27. I’m extremely pleased with that, especially because I’ve signed up to read 30 books in June with Shauna for the Summer Reading Blitz. That’s only 3 more than I read this month, so if I stay on track with my dissertation, it’s a distinct possibility.
92. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
93. The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire – C. M. Mayo
94. Welcome to Temptation – Jennifer Crusie
95. The Well of Lost Plots – Jasper Fforde
96. The World in Half – Cristina Henriquez
97. The Vampire of Ropraz – Jacques Chessex
98. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
99. The Founding – Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
100. Simply Unforgettable – Mary Balogh
101. The Reincarnationist – M.J. Rose
102. Silk – Alessandro Baricco
103. The Convenient Marriage – Georgette Heyer
104. Atlas of Unknowns – Tania James
105. The Ghost Brigades – John Scalzi
106. Undead and Unwelcome – MaryJanice Davidson
107. Starfinder – John Marco
108. The Bridge of the Golden Horn – Emine Sevgi Ozdamar
109. Moon Called – Patricia Briggs
110. Warrior Daughter – Janet Paisley
111. Shanghai Girls – Lisa See
112. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict – Laurie Viera Rigler
113. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
114. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane – Katherine Howe
115. Tethered – Amy MacKinnon
116. Simply Love – Mary Balogh
117. Beauty – Robin McKinley
118. Love Walked In – Marisa de los Santos
As you can see from the distinctly sparse number of links up there, most of these books have not been reviewed yet. The reviews have mostly been written and are waiting to be posted. I have a truly ridiculous backlog of reviews because I read so fast. I haven’t yet graduated to posting a review a day, but I’m almost there. My blog can at this point run without me for about a month. Logically, I’m not really expecting to slow down until I get married in October, at which point I will probably be grateful for the backlog!
My favorites:
   
At least, I think. It’s so hard to choose!
As far as my TBR pile goes, I read 20 of my own books this month and I acquired 15, so I cleared a total of 5. Not as good as last month; we’ll see how this one goes!
Did you read any fantastic books last month?
 Questions: Do you Tweet? If so, what do you like best about Twitter? What do you like the least? Do you have any Twitter applications or extras that you use frequently (TweetDeck, TwitterFeed, etc)? Do you belong to any of the Twitter groups on LT?
I am on twitter, you can find me right here. I think it’s a lot of fun and that the many, many twitter nay-sayers don’t really understand its purpose. I use twitter for chatting with bookish friends and networking with bookish people, not for just saying what I’m doing at any given time (although sometimes I do that too). I can follow my favorite comedian and my favorite musician and have a fast track to their news which otherwise would require me remembering visit websites, myspace (yuck!) and so on. I have a couple of “real life” friends on twitter, but I think it works best as a platform to broadcast debates, questions, and have discussions involving lots of people. I’d say I like twitter spam the least; I go check out every one of my new followers and I’m very often disappointed. I have strange followers, like people trying to sell me pet food when at present I am sadly pet-less, so I think it has to be monitored somewhat carefully, but the rewards are greater than the hassle.
I use TweetDeck to keep up with the tweets. I find the website often down and painfully slow, so in a sense TweetDeck is fantastic. It does slow everything else down, so I have to turn it off if I’m using my VoIP phone to talk with my parents or people in the USA, but when I’m just browsing, it’s great.
I don’t belong to any twitter groups on LT. I already belong to too many groups and I’m more of a lurker than a poster, so it’s best if I keep away.
If you want to participate in Tuesday Thingers, just click the button above. I am working on a month wrap-up post for later, so I hope no one minds me posting more than once today!
 In 1966, at the age of 16, our unnamed heroine leaves her native Istanbul and signs up as a migrant worker in Germany. Lying about her age, she gets work on an assembly line in West Berlin making radios, and lives in a women’s factory hostel.
THE BRIDGE OF THE GOLDEN HORN is a witty, picaresque account of a precocious teenager refusing to become wise; of a hectic four years lived between Berlin and Istanbul; of a young woman who is obsessed by theatre, film, poetry and left-wing politics.
While this book was interesting, I’m not sure it was my cup of tea. I think “hectic” is a fantastic way to start off describing it. We breeze through quite a bit of the narrator’s life and it’s hard to be sure what it meant. Despite the quick pace of events, the book felt very, very slow. Since it was a memoir (or a semi-autobiographical novel, as I see elsewhere), I expected to feel some sort of attachment for the main character, but it was surprisingly difficult. I certainly thought her journey was interesting. How many stories take place within a Cold War-era Berlin factory? Or in Istanbul? Not very many, at least not many that I read.
Sevgi’s goal in life is to become an actress. She’s willing to do more or less anything to get there. Saving money for theatre school is the purpose of her time in Berlin, but she also does plenty of other things in order to fit the image of actress. This includes many attempts at giving up her virginity, which she calls her “diamond”. Several men tell her that she is too young for sex, but she persists in thinking that her diamond is holding her back. This is just one of the occurrences which made me struggle to relate to her. When she does give up that diamond, she sleeps with men indiscriminately, often practicing her acting skills by faking her pleasure.
Something I did enjoy here was the book’s focus on literature, although not necessarily the political outcome of Sevgi’s learning. Sevgi is determined to educate herself, beginning with a book received from the communist hostel warden and continuing throughout her life. Books are treasures. By the end of the novel, however, it seemed that all of Sevgi’s learning, in fact her whole journey, was centered on teaching her to become a communist. While communism at its core is an interesting ideology, I found it hard to sympathize with someone who ignored the fact that communist countries regularly turn into dictatorships and continued following an idealized belief which has little to no real world value.
I suspect that were I older, I would have found more to enjoy in this book. If I’d lived through the events referenced in the USA, I would perhaps have been better able to draw connections and enjoy the allusions sprinkled throughout. As it stands, though, I found this book difficult to get through and at times, very much over my head. I can’t recommend it.
Here is a more favorable review.
Available through Amazon, Amazon UK, Powell’s, and IndieBound.
|
|
Recent Comments