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 Art historian Campbell Stratford is very close to securing the top job at her museum, but first she needs to complete a biography of seventeenth century artist Anthony Van Dyck first. Unfortunately, her publisher wants her to add a little sex and drama to an otherwise rather staid story, and she has no idea where to start. Then she accidentally discovers a time portal, courtesy of amazon.com, and finds herself in seventeenth century England at the studio of Peter Lely with a host of naked models. At first naturally shocked, Campbell then seizes on the opportunity to observe Lely paint – but she doesn’t know that he’s been expecting her, and neither of them could have predicted the attraction that immediately springs up between them.
I haven’t read very many time travel romances, but I liked this idea of this one, and it was very well executed for the first part. We’re aware of the time travel from the very beginning, since the book starts from Peter Lely’s point of view. He’s sent back from an in-between place – between dying and being born again – to rescue Van Dyck’s reputation, but his personal goal is to declare his dead lover, Ursula, his wife by royal decree. When he meets Campbell, he’s astonished by his reaction to her.
The best part of this book for me was reading about each individual character’s reaction to finding themselves in the past or the future. Campbell is considerably less shocked by her presence in the sixteenth century than Peter is by his in the twenty-first, which only makes sense. She’s spent her life studying the period, so she at least knows what’s going on. Everything is foreign to Peter and his earnest determination to stick to calling things what he’s used to – tunic, carriage, and so on – is endearing. I really liked the way the whole time travel angle was handed, and I think that now I’d be open to reading more in the genre (Yes, I have read Outlander and no, I didn’t love it the way everyone else did).
The romance did let me down a bit, though. I often fail to relate to couples who meet and then two hours later find themselves in bed together; it’s just not something I’d ever do and it definitely has me questioning the believability factor. This is especially so when Peter and Campbell shortly afterwards develop animosity towards one another; there’s so much distrust that it’s hard to believe they could also be falling in love at the same time.
So, to sum up, I enjoyed Flirting with Forever but I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I’d been able to connect with the romance. Still, I definitely wouldn’t mind reading more by Gwyn Cready or in the genre of time travel romance.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Lady Duff Gordon is one of nineteenth century London’s best known aristocrats. Famed for her house parties, friendships, and writing, she is admired by all who meet her, including her lady’s maid, Sally Naldrett. But Lady Duff Gordon has tuberculosis and is slowly dying from the inside out, even though she tries to hide it. Her doctors advise a departure from the damp English climate, so she’s forced to move away from her family, to Egypt, with only Sally as a companion. There, without a household of servants around her and the love of her Lady giving her peace, Sally begins to discover freedom like she’d never imagined; until she crosses a line and abruptly learns that she has nothing.
The Mistress Of Nothing has the distinction of being one of few historical fiction novels I’ve managed to thoroughly enjoy this year. I was never bored and I never knew what was going to happen next, which is so refreshing when I feel I’m usually reading the same stories over and over again. Kate Pullinger’s prose is rich and enveloping; I was completely sucked into this book from the very first page. Sally narrates the book and I adored her voice and her character, how she embraces freedoms and discovers so much about herself that wasn’t possible when she was only a simple servant.
The gorgeous descriptions made me feel as though I could have been in England and Egypt, too. I really enjoyed the contrast between the two locations. Not much time is spent in England in the book, but Sally has lived there her whole life and she recognizes when her life begins to change. Just the moment when she decides to stop wearing her corset is perfectly captured:
” … Without it, I felt fully unwrapped and as though everyone was looking at me. My back and arms seemed loosened and free, even with the stiff brown muslim on once again. I felt odd, as though along with the stays, I’d removed my spine and become a kind of jelly creature, supple, porous.”
At that moment, Sally starts to embrace her new freedom. She loves her Lady – has chosen not to marry in order to stay with her – but she remembers that she is also her own person and starts to seize on her time in Egypt. Later in the book, her new ways cause her trouble fitting in with other English people; she becomes a product of her experiences in both countries.
Everything else about the book was richly drawn and evocative, too – the characters’ emotions, the slow-moving but deeply impacting plotline, even the lazy Nile that meanders through the town in which Sally lives. But the whole thing is truly about a class struggle. Even when Sally feels equal to her employer, even when she’s spent her life serving another person and that person seems to feel just as affectionate as she does, she can easily be knocked down to absolute zero simply because she’s a servant. It’s not only a story about a woman embracing life, it’s a story about learning that things could be different and bucking the trend for the first time. That, at the core, is what makes it so powerful.
I loved The Mistress Of Nothing and, if you enjoy historical fiction, I’m pretty sure you will too.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 I’m going to have to quote the back of this one; I’m not sure how I’d go about summarizing it myself!
‘”If you look hard enough into the history of anything, you will discover certain things that seem to be connected but are not.” So claims a character in Frederick Reiken’s wonderful, surprising new novel, which seems in fact to be determined to prove the opposite. How else to explain the threads that link a middle-aged woman on vacation in Florida with an elusive sixties-era fugitive, as well as a dozen or so other characters whose lives seem to be mysteriously intertwined? As the story travels from Florida to Salt Lake City to New Jersey to the Caribbean to the Dead sea, this wondrous, exquisitely crafted novel glides effortlessly across time and space, reaching forward and back and building toward unexpected moments of revelation.’
I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into when I started this book. I immediately liked the way it was written, but I wasn’t sure where the stories were going. That first jump between the different strands threw me a little and I didn’t really understand how anything was connected. But it was a book club read and an ARC, so I persevered, and I ended up rewarded.
I loved the way the stories melded themselves together and sometimes actually didn’t. That’s okay; it felt a bit more realistic because of it and it perfectly balanced some of the coincidences throughout. Each small story led to another small story, each interesting and surprisingly full fleshed character to another, and every facet of the book wove together beautifully. I honestly could never have the imagination and capacity for narrative scope that Reiken must have; I am already an intense admirer of him and I’ve only read this one book. I’m eager to read more, after this.
I really appreciated the way so many of the stories connected with the past and the book showed how history can resonate through people’s lives and how events can influence actions and thoughts decades after they happened. People are not floating about in a vacuum; our history and culture make us who we are in many ways. World War II was the perfect choice for this book, I think, because so much of that does still affect us in enormous ways. Reiken has a lot to draw on and he does so without an absolutely masterful skill.
I would wholeheartedly recommend this beautiful book. It takes a little while to get into Day for Night, but once you are I am firmly convinced you’ll be hooked – and thrilled you read it.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 So, after all my excitement and progress on Friday, my fervor for bloggy improvements more or less died out on Saturday and continued dying today. I just didn’t want to spend the entire weekend on the computer. I’ve written most of my outstanding reviews, but that’s about all I got done, so I’ve only spent about five hours total on my blog. But the big event did give me the impetus I needed to make the important change of moving my blog over to its new domain and fixing all the links, which was what I really needed to achieve anyway. Thanks to Natasha at Maw Books Blog for hosting the event!
I appear to have focused on reading instead of blogging; I did manage to finish The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, and Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews. I’m about to start The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner and I’m really looking forward to it. I doubt I’ll read the whole thing today, but I definitely want to have a couple of hours with it this evening. I also got a few things done around the house and we watched the USA vs England game. I’m not really into the World Cup – or soccer – too much, but we figured since one of us was American and the other British that we should put forth effort. Typically, it was a draw, probably disappointing people in both countries, but at least in my house we’re still even.
We’ve also given up the battle against the TBR around here. Last week I purchased my very own TBR bookcase which, unsurprisingly, is already full. Keith likes to think that I won’t buy new books until there’s space for them on there, but I think we all know what’s going to happen. I can finally see all of my books since for the first time they’re not shelved double. I officially have about 150 books here that are unread, which leaves a very scary number still at my parents’ house in the US. I’ll be getting at least a few of those back here in July and it’ll be interesting to see just how many we can squeeze on there. I’ll show off the bookcase in my next library loot post, coming probably on Tuesday! I finally managed to read a few library books so I can head back there again tomorrow.
That’s all for me this week; I have a more contemplative Sunday Salon planned but I think I’ll save that one for next week. I hope some good reads are ahead for you this week!
 Thought it would be a good idea to see where we are now. Here’s the updated list.
- Make a spreadsheet of all current posts and links to make redirects easier.
- Change permalink structure to pretty URLs.
- Determine best way and then do 301 redirect pages, most recent posts, and most popular posts, noting changes in spreadsheet, and do five minutes or so every couple of hours to get more done. (if anyone else has done this before, advice would be greatly appreciated!)
- Change URL across internet – technorati, blogcatalog, etc.
- Catch up on reviews – do mini reviews of anything over 2 weeks old, schedule over next week
- Check for updates on review policy, about me section
- Find plugin for and create sitemaps
- Update all “Read in” pages with books read and links to reviews, add 2010 page
- Post reviews across to LibraryThing and Amazon
- Added Google Webmaster Tools.
I’ve had Keith’s help for the first three because he actually knows what he’s doing. First we moved the site over (after a backup) from chikune.com/blog to medievalbookworm.com officially and redirected all links on the old blog to go to the new one. That’s just a line of code in the .htaccess file, which he did have to modify but should be easier for anyone who isn’t on a subfolder to start. I found it just Googling. Then Keith made a spreadsheet from the database of all the posts and links with the ugly URLs and we did another backup of different parts of the site. Keith also had to fix my old images uploaded to chikune.com/blog in the database. I then installed a plugin called Permalinks Migration and put in my old ugly URL structure (/%page_id) and saved that. And, finally, I changed my permalinks and watched in awe as the entire thing worked and took way, way less time than I ever thought it would.
So, please let me know if any links around are broken or if any strange errors pop up at any time over the next few weeks. It all seems to be working amazingly well here. And if you’re using WordPress, change your permalinks! It was amazingly easy once we figured out what we were doing, and if I hadn’t been moving my blog to a better domain it would have been even easier.
See you all tomorrow for the next six items on my agenda – I hope everyone else’s Bloggiesta is going as well! I’ll be checking in the morning.
I didn’t participate in Bloggiesta the last time, so I’m quite excited to do it this weekend! I have a ton of work to get done on my blog and I’ll be starting this evening when I get back from work (this post is going to help me organize!). Most of my work is catch up and switching over my URL for real this time.
- Make a spreadsheet of all current posts and links to make redirects easier.
- Change permalink structure to pretty URLs.
- Determine best way and then do 301 redirect pages, most recent posts, and most popular posts, noting changes in spreadsheet, and do five minutes or so every couple of hours to get more done. (if anyone else has done this before, advice would be greatly appreciated!)
- Change URL across internet – technorati, blogcatalog, etc.
- Catch up on reviews – do mini reviews of anything over 2 weeks old, schedule over next week
- Check for updates on review policy, about me section
- Find plugin for and create sitemaps
- Update all “Read in” pages with books read and links to reviews, add 2010 page
- Post reviews across to LibraryThing and Amazon
I think that’s plenty for now – I also would like to get through three books this weekend (The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner, Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, and Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews) so we’ll see how much I can actually accomplish.
Good luck everyone!
 A single steamer ride threw Theresa Longworth and Charles Yelverton together in 1852. They didn’t begin to correspond immediately, but Theresa soon found reason to write a letter to Yelverton, starting off a haphazard courtship and irregular marriage that would change the course of her life forever. Theresa’s fight for recognition as Yelverton’s wife highlight the serious issues with Victorian marriage laws in Great Britain, while her sojourn and writings later on in her life demonstrated her will to retain independence and support herself no matter the cost.
This was a truly fascinating book. Theresa and Yelverton’s courtship is carried on almost completely in letters, and while there were not nearly enough excerpts for me, Schama’s narrative was enough to keep me curious and wondering about Yelverton’s motives in particular. I particularly enjoyed the sections where Theresa was a nurse in the Crimean war; they were disturbing but illuminating, and I appreciated the references to the better-known Florence Nightingale. I was astonished at the fact that a couple could essentially get married twice, have it certified as legal in both Scotland and Ireland, yet allow the man to marry again and acknowledge the second marriage over the first in England, more or less because he chose that marriage.
Just the various court battles provide for surprisingly good reading, especially the first one. There’s a curious dichotomy between Theresa’s somewhat obvious “promiscuity” – staying with Yelverton as his wife despite the questionable legality of their marriage, surely a Victorian no-no – and the courtroom portrayal of her as a virtuous innocent used by a man.
The second half of the book covers the end of the court battle, with Theresa continuing to use Yelverton’s name but going off to live her own life. At times, the book definitely suffered from having a less coherent narrative here. Schama sometimes has to delve into various backstories of history to explain why Theresa does things and goes places, which was necessary but dragged. Without the love letters, the book had a less personal feel and I felt like I couldn’t relate to the older Theresa as much as the younger one.
But what she accomplished was fantastic – making herself a living off of her writings and traveling the world. She traveled throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia, documenting it all in a series of fictional retellings. I wish these books were still in print. I loved that Theresa’s writings to defend herself early on in her life lent her the voice and independence to make it on her own at a time when women had few rights. The rest of her life almost reads like defiance; if the courtroom couldn’t recognize her right to her marriage and a husband’s protection, she was going to prove that she didn’t need it anyway.
I’ve seen a few reviews around that suggest the book was written in too scholarly a tone, so I think it is important to note here that it’s non-fiction and reads like a non-fiction book. I didn’t have a problem with this at all and in fact enjoyed the more factual tone – the book never slips in sensationalism as it so easily could have done – but it’s worth briefly noting. The entire thing is less than 300 pages long, so even when parts do drag they’re usually over in 10 pages and something more interesting has happened again.
I also totally loved the literary references sprinkled throughout the book. Schama especially notes how the courtship and later court battle between Yelverton and Theresa gave rise to numerous fictional stories around similar subjects; she actually discovered the story through a literary footnote. I think these little tidbits perfectly tied the book into its historical and literary context, reminding me of what I’d read before and what I really should read again.
Overall, Wild Romance was an excellent book. It’s a fascinating historical account of an extraordinary Victorian woman, poking at the society’s flaws – not just in England, but worldwide – while demonstrating how a truly motivated woman could go about making a life for herself in nontraditional ways. The first half was better than the second half, but it’s all worth reading.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.
 In the early twentieth century, Benjamin Purnell gathered a group of followers dedicated to chastity and remaining young forever, called the House of David. Together they relocated to Benton Harbor, Michigan, and created a community called Eden Springs. An amusement park and a house full of young people successfully hid the corruption within, though, until eventually Benjamin Purnell’s lechery and abuse of young women was exposed. This is a re-imagining of those true events, supported by documentary images and real newspaper clippings about Eden Springs.
I had never heard of Eden Springs before and to be honest I found just the history fascinating and quite disturbing at the same time. I did have to look it up to fully understand what was going on at first; I really had no idea where the story was going or what had happened with the cult. But the writing was beautiful and I really wanted to continue, so I perservered beyond the first fifty pages and the story came together.
In essence, the story centers around girls. One’s death is covered up, a sixteen-year-old buried under the headstone of a sixty-year-old woman. Another is frustrated with life and longs for openness. Yet another girl, pregnant, longs for Benjamin Purnell’s touch once again; but all the girls long for him. Slowly, suspicion grows in the reader and the community as we realize that far too many women are pregnant for a colony about chastity and when rushed marriages take place in order to explain the babies. Only then do we become aware of what’s happened and why Lena longs so desperately to get away.
If anything, I really wanted more from this book. The chapters were very short and written in a dreamlike style, as though the girls were living in a haze before the truth was exposed. Even then, they still longed to see Purnell. Though the images and newspaper clippings definitely expanded on the story and brought it more to life, I still felt like I didn’t get the appeal of Benjamin Purnell or the cult in general. I could see how nice it would be to run an amusement park surrounded by luscious fruit trees providing all the money the followers could ever want, but personally that wouldn’t be a draw.
I would definitely recommend Eden Springs to anyone who has heard of the House of David before – it’s just such an interesting story. The fact that the fiction is backed up by so much genuine history for me really enlivened the book. I just wish it had been longer!
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from a publicist for review.
 We all know who Barack Obama is now, but how did he get here? What motivated him? From his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia to his rougher college years and on to his time as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama writes eloquently and compellingly about serious issues that we all wish were in the past already, like racism, suffering, and poverty.
Yep, I voted for Barack Obama. And I’m still quite proud that we, a country still astonishingly full of racism in so many ways, managed to elect a black man to the Presidency. So ever since then, I’ve been very curious about where he came from and how he got to the point where it was reasonable that he might become President. Unfortunately this book doesn’t go quite that far and ends right before he heads to law school, so his final motivations remain unclear. But I think this memoir is valuable for a lot of the things he says but also because it was written before he ever thought to go that far, and as such I think he is somewhat more candid about his life than he would have otherwise been – he mentions drug use numerous times, for example.
I enjoyed how this particular memoir followed a narrative path. Obama acknowledges in the foreword that he changed the names of people he knew and sometimes melded them together to make for an easier reading experience, which at first I wasn’t sure I liked but I’m sure those people are grateful for it now. I definitely felt like I was on a journey, from the moment he realized that he looked different from his mother and grandparents for the first time, to the idolization of his father, to his eventual success and work on behalf of poor black communities in Chicago. I was impressed by how well the memoir was organized and written; it’s also a bit more academic and thoughtful in structure than I would imagine most memoirs written by political figures to be. He doesn’t talk much about his truly personal life – he almost never mentions relationships with women – and I appreciated that a lot.
I was also surprised by how clearly I recognized his narrative voice. I was impressed by how he could reflect on his own experiences and apply them to the wider world – how he was confused as a black teenager and in some way identifies with the teens of Chicago but also recognizes that he was more privileged than them. He can acknowledge the faults of his family members even as it’s obvious how deeply he loved them. I was surprisingly depressed by his experiences in Chicago and saddened by the situation that poor black families found themselves in, with little kids living in houses full of asbestos and public officials lying about its presence. And I was astonished at the stigma that a mixed race couple experienced when he was in his twenties. I have never understood such discrimination and it truly makes me sad when love is dismissed by society because it doesn’t look like the norm.
I truly believe that even people who are the opposite side of the political divide will gain value from this book. It’s not political at all – which is why I chose this one and not his other book – and it is a surprisingly compelling story of a confused boy growing into a man who wants to help people. His life story is fascinating and I was particularly intrigued by the parts of the book set in Kenya and Indonesia, two places I’d never really thought about in depth. Obama’s outsider understanding of these cultures helped mark them out for me and gave me a lot to think about. I am very glad I read Dreams From My Father and I’ve only touched on a few of the many parts of this book that made me think – it’s a valuable memoir that I fully enjoyed reading.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library. They like Barack Obama in the UK.
 When her beloved grandfather dies, Theodora Lestrange finds herself dependent on the charity of others to survive. As a Victorian woman intent on making her living by her pen, she still doesn’t earn enough to house herself, but she’s repulsed by the idea of living with her sister and brother-in-law and children. Luckily, her friend Cosmina writes to her, urging her to attend her wedding in Romania to the enigmatic Count Dragulescu, and stay for a while. Theodora gratefully accepts, planning to write her novel in an atmospheric castle. But when she arrives, she discovers more than atmosphere – a mystery that could have more to do with the supernatural than anything she’s ever encountered before.
If you’re a long-time reader of my blog, you’ll know that I just adore Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey series. I was made a little sad by the fact that she took time off from Julia to write this book, but I looked forward to it just the same. And with good reason; her writing quality stands up to the test and I definitely enjoyed my time with this book.
The beginning started off particularly slowly, which had me worrying at first. It all felt like a simple summary of what had gone before and way more telling than showing. I was waiting for the action to get started, and it finally picked up when Theodora got to Romania and the book began properly.
I didn’t love it quite as much as the Lady Julia Grey series, though, perhaps because much of it feels like the same characters in a different story. Theodora is a paler imitation of Julia and the Count just doesn’t have the appeal that Nicholas Brisbane does. I didn’t fall in love with them and I felt the Count in particular remained shadowy, possessed of few attributes beyond his physical attractiveness and rakish past. But I liked them and I was intrigued by the mystery, whether there were truly supernatural creatures in Romania or not and what was the true cause of these crimes. I didn’t predict the outcome, but then I didn’t think about it all the much either. I was too busy reading!
The Dead Travel Fast is an engaging gothic romance, but doesn’t quite touch the appeal of the Lady Julia Grey series. If you’re new to Raybourn’s books, I would suggest starting with Silent in the Grave.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the Amazon Vine program for review.
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