First Impressions

This novel is a MUST READ for all Jane Austen fans! I just loved it, I had to force myself to put it down to celebrate Christmas :-).

So, this is one of those fun stories that jumps back-and-forth in time. We have the modern-day story of Sophie Collingwood, bibliophile and Janeite, as she is pursued by two suitors while searching for a mysterious second edition of an 18th century book of allegories by a Reverend Richard Mansfield. In alternating chapters we have the 18th century story of Jane Austen's friendship with the same Reverend Mansfield, with whom she discusses her novel writing and budding literary career.

The author, Charlie Lovett, does a great job of taking us back to the world of a young Jane, but he does an equally great job of making Sophie into a sort of modern-day Elizabeth Bennet. The action and the mystery had me right until the end, and as a book-lover I adored Sophie's relationship with her Uncle Bertram as well as with her books.

Even if you haven't read a word of Jane Austen, you'll still enjoy the mystery that Sophie is hoping - and dreading - she'll solve. This is just a great book!

First Impressions

A Spool of Blue Thread

Anne Tyler may write about families better than any other author. Certainly in this novel she captures how a family can seem one way to outsiders but be completely different in reality, and how all of the members of the family can see shared experiences from completely different perspectives. And Tyler's characters are just so rich and well-written, they seem like actual people.

The Whitshanks are a regular middle class Baltimore family, who have two "family stories" that they all know: the story of how grandfather Junior built the family house and he and grandmother Linnie Mae came to live in it, and the story of how parents Abby and Red fell in love. In later sections of the book we learn that family legends are not always what they seem to be.

The Whitshank kids are all different - Stem, Denny, Jeannie, and Amanda. Denny is probably the most interesting of the kids but also the least well-developed in my opinion - I kept waiting to learn something else about him to explain why he was the way he was. But I loved how Tyler brought us the real stories of Junior and Linnie Mae and Red and Abby - those felt very real, and seemed like something that could have happened in anyone's family.

This was a really enjoyable book, and I highly recommend it.

A Spool of Blue Thread

Her

I'm not generally into psychological thrillers but this book was all over everyone's reading lists, and was compared to Gone Girl, so I had to read it. I didn't love it.

It's the story of Nina and Emma, two very different women who meet "by chance" and develop a friendship. They're very different - Nina is a successful artist on her second husband, and with a teen-aged daughter; Emma has a toddler and is about to give birth to her second child. Although of a similar age they are at very different points in life, and Emma sees Nina as someone to admire and confide in - but she's not sure what Nina sees in her.

It turns out that Nina and Emma knew each other briefly one summer long ago, but Emma seems to have no recollection of Nina, while Nina remembers Emma only too well - and is still upset by something that happened that long-ago summer. So, what Emma thinks are coincidences and mix-ups are actually Nina's carefully engineered plots. The reader learns this early on, because the story is told in alternating chapters from each woman's perspective. I don't think this device worked very well, because it gave me too much information too soon. I think if I had heard all of Emma's side first, then heard all of Nina's side, I would have been more shocked - and, consequentially, more entertained.

I didn't love the book, but I kept reading it waiting to see how it ended. But then I was disappointed with the ending. So, there's my tepid non-recommendation.

Her

The One and Only

Fair warning: this novel contains A LOT about football. But it's also kind of chick-lit, um, ish. But then again, it's also about loyalty and family and friends and being one's best self. And did I mention there's a lot about football?

The story revolves around Shea, a single 30-something who lives and breathes football in the Texas college town of Walker. Her best friend Lucy's father is the Walker football coach, and he and Shea have always had a shared love for football, and for Walker football in particular. But when Lucy's mother dies after a losing battle with cancer, Shea's feelings for Coach start moving in a new, and rather, ahem, unconventional, direction.

I really enjoyed this book, Shea is a great character, smart, funny, warm and interesting. I have to confess, though, I had moments where I was a little uncomfortable with how the story was going. I mean, Shea has the hots for her best friend's father. But the way the author Emily Giffin handles a delicate situation is what makes the book so good, and I definitely recommend it.

The One and Only

Stella Bain

I have always been a fan of Anita Shreve, and this novel did not disappoint. It's thoughtful, heartbreaking, profound, and, in a way, uplifting. And like all of Shreve's work, it's beautifully written.

In a field hospital in Marne, France, during WWI, a young woman awakes, injured, with no idea who she is. After a time she comes to believe that her name is Stella Bain, and that she is a nurse's aid and ambulance driver. It turns out she is also an adept artist. In the back of her mind is the idea that she must get to London, to the Admiralty - though she is American, not British. But she somehow makes her way to London, where she is taken in by the Bridges - he is a cranial surgeon, and he and his wife Lily care for Stella, and he tries to help her with her amnesia and distress.

We soon learn that Stella isn't Stella, and that she has left behind a very complicated life in America. Shreve deftly uses straight narration, flashbacks, and letters to get us from France to London to New Hampshire. Through it all she paints a portrait of a woman who is strong, kind, independent, and loving. It's a truly moving story.

Stella Bain

Maybe in Another Life

Okay, so the first few pages of this book all I could think was "chick-lit," and only the excellent reviews it received kept me reading past the first few pages. Boy am I glad I did! The story just sucked me in and I pretty much could not put the book down.

The novel follows the main character, Hannah, a woman in her late-20's who has sort of drifted from city to city, job to job, never finding what she is looking for. In the first chapter she is moving back to her hometown of Los Angeles, where she will stay with her BFF Gabby and Gabby's husband Mark until she finds a job and gets her life together. One night right after her arrival, Gabby arranges for a bunch of old friends to get together at a local bar, including Hannah's high school boyfriend Ethan. At the end of the evening, Hannah has to decide between staying out with Ethan, or going home with Gabby and Mark. And when she decides... this is where the story gets interesting.

The author, Taylor Jenkins Reed, presents us with alternating chapters outlining what happens if Hannah makes each of these decisions - so basically, two different realities. As time progresses, we see how one little, seemingly mundane, decision can change just about everything. It's a pretty deep, philosophical, even cosmic discussion, dressed up as an entertaining novel about a young woman making her way in the world. And I loved it!

Maybe in Another Life

A Price to Pay

I really enjoyed this novel, which uses a very interesting premise to tell the stories of three very different people. The author Alex Capus, starts at a train station in Zurich in 1924 where the paths of Emile Gillieron, Felix Bloch, and Laura d'Oriano cross - though they never meet - to take us on a journey through each of their rich and at times interwoven paths.

Emile is one of the greatest art forgers of his day, who works with a renowned archaeologist in Greece to recreate ancient artifacts. Felix is a gifted scientist who finds his way to New Mexico and works with Robert Oppenheimer. And Laura is a moderately talented singer with a gift for languages who eventually becomes a spy for the Allies. Capus chronicles their lives along the way, and in doing so paints a portrait of prewar and wartime Europe.

This isn't an epic, and it's a very nice read. I highly recommend it.

A Price to Pay

The Virgin's Daughter

This is now the second of Laura Anderson's books that I've read, and I really like them. She has a whole series in which she rewrites history, imagining what had happened if Henry VIII had a son that had lived, and focusing on him (William), his sister Elizabeth, and their close friends Dominic and Minuette. In this novel, William has been dead for several years so Elizabeth is queen, and she has born a princess, Anne, through her marriage to King Phillip of Spain.

Anne is now 18-years-old and her closest friends are the children of Dominic and Minuette, particularly the eerily wise Pippa. But this novel focuses more on Pippa's older sister Lucette, a very smart and beautiful young woman who may or may not be William's illegitimate daughter. Trying to quash a plot against the throne that may involve the LeClerc family - old friends of Dominic and Minuette, who are French Catholic - Elizabeth sends Lucette to France for a friendly visit, hoping she can bring down a spy. Lucette remembers the LeClerc boys from her childhood - Nicolas and Julien. But they are boys no longer, and she is no longer the 10-year-old girl who had a huge crush on the dashing Nicolas.

There lots of intrigue and a very thorough and well-researched re-imagining of history. If you like Philippa Gregory you will like Laura Anderson. I highly recommend it.

The Virgin's Daughter

Lamp Black, Wolf Grey

Laura and her husband Dan move from London to the Welsh mountains, where Laura hopes to find inspiration for her art and a reconnecting to the husband she loves, but with whom her relationship is strained due to their inability to have a child. Dan is commuting back to his job in London during the week, so Laura has lots of time alone to get to know the locals, including her handsome neighbor Rhys and the wise woman Anwen. Oh, and she also runs into Merlin (yes, him) a few times.

Running parallel to Laura's modern-day story is the story of Megan at some time in the distant past. Megan grew up in the house that Laura is now living in, but she works as the nanny to the sons of the local lord and lady, each of whom use Megan for their own nasty purposes. When Merlin comes to the area and falls in love with Megan, her employers want his talents for their own.

I enjoyed this story (Wales, Merlin, what's not to like?), but I have to say I enjoyed Megan's story a lot more than I did Laura's. I just didn't find Laura and Dan to be particularly likable characters. But it was definitely a page-turner.

Lamp Black, Wolf Grey

Sisters of Shiloh

This is a lovely, heartbreaking novel about two sisters, Josephine and Libby, who pretend to be boys and enlist in the Confederate army to avenge the death of Libby's husband Arden. The novel is actually written by two sisters, Kathy and Becky Hepinstall, and they spare the reader from none of the ugliness - or humanity - of a war fought at such close range, between enemies who often weren't sure why they were enemies.

That Josephine and Libby are able to pass for several months as boys is surprising, but that they are able to withstand the hardships they endure - with differing levels of success - is astounding. Although this is a novel of war, it is ultimately a story of the relationship between the sisters, and how their relationship is formed by each of their strengths and weaknesses.

This was an excellent read, and I highly recommend it.

Sisters of Shiloh

Mean Streak

Wow - great mystery with a lot of interesting twists! Emory Charbonneau is a pediatrician and marathon runner, who disappears while on a distance run in a national forest in North Carolina. When her husband Jeff finally figures out she is missing and reports it to the local authorities, she's been gone for 2 days and Jeff is, of course, the prime suspect.

Meanwhile, when Emory wakes up she's in a remote cabin with a mysterious man who won't tell her his name, but who appears to have no desire to harm her in any way - though he's certainly dangerous looking and obviously hiding from something. As he nurses her back to health she loses her mistrust of him, and when he gets her involved in helping a desperate neighbor, she begins to see his true character.

Jeff is playing the concerned husband, but HIS true character soon comes to light. When Emory's captor/rescuer returns her - alive - and the FBI gets involved, the story takes all sorts of interesting turns.

I have to say, I didn't see the end coming at all, and I pretty much couldn't put the book down, This was a great read.

Mean Streak

A Memory of Violets

This is a very sweet historical mystery novel, and quite a good read. It's the story of Tilly Harper, who in 1912 leaves her home in the lake country of England to take a job as housemother in one of London's Flower Houses, where former flower girls live while working in a factory making realistic flowers out of fabric. In her room at Violet House, Tilly finds a keepsake box containing a journal written by Flora Flynn, one-time resident of the the room and a former flower girl who had been saved from the streets of London in the 1880's.

The novel goes back and forth between Tilly's 1912 and Florie's 1880's, chronicling Florie and her baby sister Rosie as they sell flowers with their mother until they are separated on busy Westminster Bridge. From there their lives take two very different paths, but Florie never forgets Rosie or stops trying to find her. And Tilly has some personal issues of her own, that her experiences at the Flower Houses help her come to terms with.

There are a couple mysteries in the story (that I figured out pretty quickly), and this is a really enjoyable story with interesting characters and an intriguing story line. I highly recommend it.

A Memory of Violets

The King's Curse

Nobody does British royal history like Philippa Gregory, and this final novel of The Cousins' War series does not disappoint. What is unique about this novel is that it is told, not from the perspective of a queen or major player in the action, but from the perspective of a woman who was in many ways a witness to history, although Gregory takes the license of making her much more than that.

Lady Margaret Pole is a member of the Plantagenet family, whom Henry Tudor overthrew to take over the throne of England. Her cousin is Henry's wife, Elizabeth, so Margaret is close to the royal family, and spends a great deal of time with their children. She and her husband have the care of Prince Arthur of Wales, Henry's heir. She is with Arthur when Catherine of Aragon comes to be his bride, and becomes fast friends with the new princess. Then Arthur dies from sickness, and his spoiled younger brother Harry marries his widowed bride and becomes Henry VIII shortly thereafter. With Henry's ascension to the throne, Margaret is restored to her family's titles, lands, and wealth, and becomes an important member of Catherine's household.

This novel covers the period from 1499ish to the 1540's, from Catherine of Aragon through Catherine Howard, all told from Margaret's perspective as a loyal adherent of Catherine's and a staunch supporter of the Roman Catholic church. We see her fortunes, and those of her sons, rise and fall as we see Henry VIII go from a handsome, popular monarch to an insecure, unpredictable, obese despot. Gregory makes Margaret into a player in the political intrigue of the time, and who is to say she was not? If you have any interest in British history, this novel makes for a great read.

The King's Curse

Searching for Grace Kelly

I just loved this first novel by Michael Callahan, set in the famous Barbizon Hotel for Women in NYC in the 1950's. Callahan has really captured a moment in time, and tells an entertaining story about three very different women along the way.

Beautiful Smith College undergrad Laura has come to NYC to do a summer internship with Mademoiselle. When she arrives at the Barbizon she is assigned a room with Dolly, a sunny working-class girl attending secretarial school. Soon they meet Vivian, a gorgeous Brit who loves to break the rules. The three become fast friends, and help each other through the trials of being young women in a city and a society where the rules for proper behavior are being rewritten everyday.

Callahan has a great ear for dialog and seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from Hepburn/Tracy comedies. The characters are smart, literate, and endearing. This is a wonderful and quick read.

Searching for Grace Kelly

Dark Places

I could not put this book down! This is another thriller from Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, and it does not disappoint. It's the story of Libby Day, who survived the massacre of her mother and two older sisters in 1985 in Kinnakee, Kansas, and whose testimony sent her older brother Ben to prison for life as the sole murderer.

It's now 2009 and Libby has lived her life avoiding the "dark places" of that horrible night, existing on charity and the meager revenue of a poorly-received book. But now Libby needs money, so she reluctantly accepts an appearance request from a local "Kill Club," a group that investigates old murders, and who thinks Ben is innocent. Pretty soon Libby is doubting everything she has grown up believing.

Told in turns from present-day Libby's perspective, and from the perspective of Ben and their mother, Patty, on that horrible day in January 1985, we see that not all truths are totally true, and that we believe things are a certain way because we want to believe they're that way. Like in Gone Girl, Flynn plays with our notions of reliable characters and who the reader is supposed to believe, and also with how things look isn't how things actually are.

The movie comes out in August.... with Charlize Theron as grown-up Libby. I'm looking forward to it.

Dark Places

The Siege Winter

I was very sad to learn when I picked up this book at the library that one of the authors, Ariana Franklin, is dead. I thoroughly enjoyed her Mistress of the Art of Death series, and will be sorry not to be able to read more of them. But her daughter Samantha Norman finishes this novel of 12th century England that Ariana began, and between the two of them they wrote one heck of a novel.

Told by an Abbot on his deathbed at the end of the 12th century, this is the tale of the civil war in the 1140s between King Stephen and the Empress Mathilda, rivals for the throne. But more importantly it's the story of two very strong females: Emma, the 11-year-old girl who in order to save her family, sacrifices herself to an evil monk and his band of mercenaries; and Maud, the 15-year-old chatelaine of an important castle that both Stephen and Mathilda would lay claim to.

Maud and Emma (now called Penda) eventually come to be together, but not before Penda has taken up with the honorable mercenary Gwil, who teaches her to use a bow with deadly precision, and not before Maud has found herself married to the nasty Sir John, who holds her castle for King Stephen. Then something happens to Sir John, and Empress Mathilda comes along, and well, that's where the siege in the title comes into play.

This is a wonderful historical novel, and I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend it.

The Siege Winter

Lord John and the Private Matter

If you are an Outlander fan, then you will probably like this novel. Lord John is Lord John Grey of the Outlander series, and this novel started as a short story but apparently developed into a normal-sized novel of fewer than 400 pages (those of you who read Diana Gabaldon know that for her, that IS a short story).

The action of this story takes place during the time after Culloden, after Claire has gone back to the present-day. Jamie Fraser is only mentioned in Lord John's mind, he is not a part of the story. This story is really a mystery, one that Lord John must solve. When he learns something troubling about the gentleman who is engaged to his cousin, he sets out to figure out how to broach the subject with said gentleman, but along the way gets involved with investigating the death of a member of his military unit. When the clues seem to point to the death being murder - and being somehow connected to the gentleman engaged to his cousin - Lord John finds himself running all over the seedy underside of London society.

This was a very enjoyable novel, and I'm not usually a big fan of murder mysteries. But Lord John is a very engaging character, and I enjoy Gabaldon's style of writing. I highly recommend it even to non-Outlander fans.

Lord John and the Private Matter

The American Heiress

I really, really enjoyed this book! Daisy Goodwin has created an intriguing story around a very interesting group of characters in a beautifully written novel. If you're a Downton Abbey fan, this book is a must read.

Cora Cash (how great a name is that?) is a late-19th-century American heiress - very beautiful and very nouveau riche - whose mother has decided that only an English noblemen is worthy of her daughter's hand in marriage. When Cora manages to snare a desirable but impoverished Duke, in a (seemingly) love match no less, it's the coup of the year. But then Cora discovers that English society is not as upright and honorable as it appears to be, and that her husband's affections may lie elsewhere.

Okay, so the story sounds a little Jane Austen-y, and little Bronte-esque, but that's what makes it so appealing. Goodwin has managed to bring a modern sensibility to an old world style. And she tells the story from an upstairs/downstairs perspective, where we see that sometimes the servants are snobbier than their employers, and sometimes a lady's maid is a better person than a peer. There's also the juxtaposition of American forthrightness - openness, eye contact, handshakes - with British subterfuge.

This is just a delicious story, and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

The American Heiress

The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay

This is an intriguing novel. Nina is forty-something-year-old woman who has spent most of her life in a love triangle with two brothers, Paolo and Luca. She actually married Luca, but now they've separated and she's come to this tiny Greek island where they honeymooned, trying to find herself again. Following a serious accident, she is befriended by the handsome and attentive island doctor, and they share their life stories.

Despite the action of the accident, this is very much a novel of the mind. We see Nina, through the process of sharing her life story with Dr. Christos, learning that how she thinks things were, and how things actually were, are two entirely different things. Through the process of her body recuperating, Nina realizes what actually was wrong in her marriage, and comes to understand the forces that impacted her relationships with both Paolo and Luca.

This is a really beautifully written novel, and I was drawn into the story almost immediately. I highly recommend it.

The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay

All the Light We Cannot See

This is the most amazing novel I've read in some time. Anthony Doerr has managed to create a story and characters that take you through the emotional spectrum, from heartache to hope, from outrage to joy, and everything in between. I couldn't put it down, and when I finished it I felt spent.

Okay, I know that sounds over the top, but you have to believe me.

This is the story of Marie-Laure, a blind French girl living in Paris, and Werner, a brilliant German orphan living in a mining town, growing up just before and during WWII. The novel is told in a sort of chronological order, switching from Marie's story to Werner's, and sometimes going forward or backward in time as necessary. Marie's life goes from Paris to the coastal town of Saint-Malo, while Werner's goes from the Children's Home to an elite military prep school to the German army. But the reader always senses the connection between these two bright, sensitive, and endearing characters, and they do eventually come together.

Doerr uses characterization and beautiful prose to show us the dark side of war, and the bright side of humanity. He shows how there are good people who do bad things, and situations that make heroes of the unlikeliest among us. It's an amazing book, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

All the Light We Cannot See

A Sister to Honor

Wow. I had a hard time putting this book down, I was so interested in what would happen next. Much of it was surprising, disturbing, and thought-provoking.

This novel by Lucy Ferris is the story of Afia and Shahid Satar, two young Pakistanis from a good family who have come to America to study. Shahid is the squash star, Afia the smart girl who will train to be a doctor, and then go home to Pakistan to treat women. Shahid has vowed to keep his sister protected from Western immodesty and immorality, but when a picture of her surfaces on the internet - holding hands with an American boy - a chain of events is set in motion that could ruin both of them, and their family back in Pakistan.

This is an intriguing story about honor, tradition, and the changes taking place in the Muslim world. Afia is an interesting character, modest but strong-willed, obedient and rebellious at the same time. She is being torn apart by her responsibility to her family and her sense of honor, in opposition to her desire to fit in and find her place in the West. She may be one of the strongest female characters I've come across in a long time, and her story is fascinating.

A Sister to Honor

Becoming Marie Antoinette

I thoroughly enjoyed Juliet Grey's take on the young Maria Antonia, Archduchess of Austria, married off to the French Dauphin Louis Auguste at the tender age of fourteen. Grey obviously has great affection for her main character, and she turns someone who is typically a one-dimensional historical character into a three-dimensional, likeable young woman.

I admit I know next to nothing about Marie Antoinette, born Maria Antonia into the Austrian (Hapsburg) dynasty - a dynasty famous for marrying for power rather than going to war. In order to be acceptable to the French, she goes through all sorts of preparation, both educational and physical (the description of 18th century braces is horrifying). Once she arrives in France, she is overwhelmed by a French court that was almost nothing like she expected, where courtiers urinate in the hallways and fight for the honor of handing her her nightgown. That the dauphin is more interested in hunting and cabinet-making than in getting a baby on his new wife makes her even more miserable in her new home.

It takes Marie Antoinette a while to figure out the intrigues of the French court, which is so very different from the less showy and more morally upright court of Austria. But she eventually finds her way, and she and Louis Auguste come to be friends, and more.

I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Becoming Marie Antoinette

The Alchemist's Daughter

I by turns liked and cringed at this historical novel by Katharine McMahon, the story of Emilie Selden, who we first meet as a girl at her father's isolated estate. Raised by her father in his image as a natural philosopher and alchemist during the 18th century, a time when women rarely received such an education, Emilie sadly lacks any knowledge of people and the wider world. Therefore it is no surprise that the first handsome man from London who comes along (when she's a very young 19) sweeps her off her feet and onto her back in the woods in no time.

Of course they marry, and Emilie goes with him to London where she sees how little she knows of anything that's useful for survival in her husband's rich/tawdry/immoral world. After her father dies and she and her husband inherit the estate, she finds out even more about herself and the world in which she was raised, a world that she never really saw in it's true light.

Emilie was a difficult character for me, sometimes witty and likeable, sometimes incredibly selfish. Book smart - but not literary - and often without any regard for the impact of anything on anyone except herself. But McMahon's writing is beautiful, and she evokes a real Gothic feeling that made the novel hard to put down.

The Alchemist's Daughter

The Stone Boy

This is a wonderful mystery/drama/psychological thriller, translated from the French. It's not my usual type of novel, but I became totally engrossed and couldn't put it down. It's intriguing, amusing, surprising, and sometimes troubling.

The Stone Boy is really the story of Elsa Preau, and elderly lady who returns to her house after several years in a "convalescent" home. In the years she has been gone the neighborhood has changed, and houses have been built just across the street from hers, allowing her to see from her window into the neighbor's garden. There she sees what appears to be a neglected, even abused child, who she comes to call the Stone Boy because he's always playing with the rocks in the garden. But no one else has ever seen the Stone Boy - is he even real?

Through a series of flashbacks, conversations, journal entries, and letters, we learn that Madame Preau has a history of a somewhat tenuous grasp on reality, and has enjoyed (or suffered from) relations with spirits in the past. Is the boy just another of these? Or is he a real child suffering from horrible abuse? The way the case builds in one direction - well, I won't ruin it, but I have to say I was taken by surprise again and again in this novel.

The author, Sophie Loubiere, and the translator, Nora Mahoney, really explore the idea of reliable vs. unreliable characters, and sort of leak information to drag you deeper and deeper into the story. I highly recommend it.

The Stone Boy

Blood Magick

So this is the third book of Nora Roberts' Cousins O'Dwyer trilogy, about the family of good witches fighting the evil witch who is out to destroy them. I enjoyed the first two books, and I enjoyed this one too - but, as I've said before, Nora is just getting a little predictable and boring.

Each of the books in the trilogy focuses on bringing a couple together - along with fighting the evil witch Cabhan - and this third one focuses on Branna and Fin, who've loved each other since they were teenagers but can't be together because Fin carries Cabhan's mark, meaning he has Cabhan's blood, and Branna's ancestor Sorcha placed the curse on Cabhan's bloodline because he killed her husband before destroying her. Branna and Fin are interesting and attractive characters (are any of Nora's heroes/heroines not?), and they have great repartee, but let's face it, we all knew when we opened the book that they were going to wind up together, right?

I am generally a big fan of mystical realism and witchcraft and the power of three (Charmed is one of my favorite TV series), but this book was predictable, and the final battle with Cabhan wasn't really all that exciting. I think Nora has played this theme out.

Blood Magick

The Patron Saint of Ugly

I LOVED this book! Marie Manilla has created a cast of characters so vivid, and interesting, and charming (for the most part), that I just could not put it down. This is mystical realism at its best!

Garnet Ferrari is born in Sweetwater, West Virginia, circa 1950. She's a perfect little red-haired baby, except that her body is entirely covered by port-wine birthmarks showing a map of the world. Garnet's older brother is, of course, the most beautiful little blond-headed child ever to exist, making Garnet feel inadequate, to say the least (the pointing and comments from the neighborhood kids don't help). So Garnet's Nonna Diamante creates the legend of Saint Garnet, a long-ago Sicilian girl who was saved from the flames of Mt. Etna by her devotion to God. Then Garnet starts performing miracles.

The story is told from an interesting perspective - the Church has heard of Garnet and sent an investigator from Rome. He leaves a questionnaire for her to fill out, and she does so by recording a series of tapes for him. So we get the story from Garnet's perspective - mostly (there are some interruptions from Nonna). It's a sad, funny, sometimes tragic story, but the ending is just spectacular.

The Patron Saint of Ugly

The Just City

I loved this novel by Jo Walton! She writes science fiction that doesn't feel like science fiction, and this could be an appropriate Young Adult novel but it's definitely for adults. It's a really gripping story that makes the reader think!

Here's the plot: the goddess Athena thinks it would be interesting to create Plato's Republic, as he described in his writings. So she brings together all the scholars who are interested in the same thing - just plucks them out of time when they pray to her - and brings them to Atlantis, in the time long before it will be swallowed by the sea. Together with worker robots Athena has brought from the distant future, these scholars, or "masters," create a city, which they then populate with 10,000 ten-year-old children, bought as slaves from markets in the early Christian era. One of those children is Athena's brother Apollo, who became human in order to be part of Athena's experiment and learn what humanity is like. The masters plan to raise the children to become their most excellent selves, philosopher kings, in the Just City of Plato's ideal.


Everything is going along fine, with most of the children and masters embracing all that the Just City is supposed to be. But then Socrates shows up, and he raises questions that no one had considered before. What follows are debates about slavery, humanity, the role of women, deities, and other moral questions.

This is definitely a novel of the mind, but there is enough action (and even sex) to keep most readers' attention. My only real issue is that it ends rather precipitously, but I'm pretty sure it's the first book of a trilogy so I'll be on the edge of my seat for book two!

The Just City

Jane Austen's First Love

I loved this book! It's a MUST read for all the Austenites out there. Syrie James does an amazing job of capturing the language, tone, and feeling of Jane Austen, and writes an entertaining story to boot.

The story tells of the summer that 15-year-old Jane and her sister Cassandra attended a month-long celebration of her brother Edward's engagement, where she meets the charming and handsome Edward Taylor. It's a fun and entertaining romance, and James cleverly weaves in episodes from Austen's novels as being experienced by Jane - because, after all, we would assume Jane wrote from experience, right? So we've got a carriage accident (Sanditon), a play production (Mansfield Park), and of course a failed attempt at matchmaking (Emma). Additionally, the characters of Jane and Cassandra are very much like Elizabeth and Jane Bennet from Pride and Prejudice.

The author's note at the end of the novel says that most of the characters were actual people, and most of the settings were the actual places they lived, so the research is impressive. But more than that, this is just an enjoyable novel that Austenites will get a little something extra from, but which everyone can enjoy.

Jane Austen's First Love

How the Scots Invented the Modern World

First, I have to say a big thank you to my friend Shari for giving me this book in our gift swap at the holidays. It was great! I have really been into Scottish culture while reading the Outlander series, so it was interesting to see what aspects of those novels were based on historical fact, and which were pure fiction. But it was also really interesting to read about how much of our modern world can be traced directly back to a Scotsman, or to something of the Scottish culture.

For instance, did you know that 18th century Scotland was the most literate society in the world? Yep, they had something like a 75% literacy rate, which some countries don't even have now. And did you know that most of our Ivy League universities come from the Scottish model of higher education? And of course there are a few interesting guys like David Hume, Adam Smith, and Sir Walter Scott... among many, many others.The book debunks a few "facts" as well, including one about Highlanders and their plaids (no, not that one).

If you're of Scottish descent - or just enjoy reading about Scottish culture - you will really enjoy this book. It's scholarly without being too heavy. And here is my favorite quote from the book, the one that sort of sums it all up:

The Scots did not invent technology, anymore than they invented science - or capitalism or the ideas of progress and liberty. But just as in these other cases, the version of technology we live with most closely resembles the one that Scots ... organized and perfected." (p. 321)

Isn't that cool?

How the Scots Invented the Modern World