tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11196574626772669552024-03-13T08:33:38.740-07:00read along with teabirdbook reviews in no discernible order, book musings with no discernible direction, books books books, and an occasional sip of tea.teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-65143570098944857162022-01-22T10:30:00.003-08:002022-01-22T10:30:35.837-08:00<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33917107-on-tyranny" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1484763736l/33917107._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33917107-on-tyranny">On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/243930.Timothy_Snyder">Timothy Snyder</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4496726164">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
"When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires more reading."<br /><br />Read this for the concepts, the clarity, the history, the norms and lack of norms, and the brilliant brevity. Read it for the table of contents, which begins with "Do not obey in advance," and ends with "Be as courageous as you can." Just read it. NOW.
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-81969488188225855682017-06-08T12:08:00.002-07:002017-06-08T12:08:54.229-07:00Save a horse ride a cowgirl<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27838612-save-a-horse-ride-a-cowgirl" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Save a Horse Ride a Cowgirl" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1447654634m/27838612.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27838612-save-a-horse-ride-a-cowgirl">Save a Horse Ride a Cowgirl</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6746.Ann_Beattie">Ann Beattie</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2023728663">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Although Ann Beattie's characters have aged, their world is still recognizable even if their faces and bodies have changed. Many now can afford luxuries, like a showerhead "which approximated a rainstorm that would fall with enough force to blind frogs." Some live in assisted living facilities, petting dogs brought by well-meaning volunteers. If they still live at home, their garden paths are aglow with "solar spotlights allowing the stamens of flowers to puncture the night like so many silent tongues."<br /><br />One thing that has not changed: most characters are distinguished by the things they still carry, and the references they learned when they were young. Dr. T. D. Eckleburg makes an appearance at a party celebrating Bernie Madoff's sentencing, and when characters dance, the music is not new.<br /><br />One other thing these characters have in common: they all want to retain control and to shape the narration of the rest of their lives. The reader sometimes listens in as a character relates his or her own actions, blurring the authorial line between showing and telling. Even a dog, whose ears "looked like someone had given up while folding origami," tells us about his view of the lifelong search for love.<br /><br />Not all of these character-driven stories hold together in the longer form they are given. Maybe Ms. Beattie means for us to lose patience with some. Some characters, though, open themselves to live in old age with people they might not have noticed before, sometimes literally. Those make the reader cheer, and cheer up.<br /><br />Ms. Beattie's writing is a bit less sparse than it once was, but no less wry or sharp. The details still matter -- the boots, the music, the wine. One looks at people disappearing up a flight of stairs, perhaps "to the roof, from which they'd take flight and clutter the night sky, for all she knew." The reader doesn't know either, but she has met them, and they are real.<br /><br />Highly recommended. I received this book as an electronic ARC from Net Galley.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-13575660972214295412017-04-27T10:41:00.000-07:002017-04-27T10:41:00.216-07:00<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25734059-at-the-existentialist-caf" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1454339160m/25734059.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25734059-at-the-existentialist-caf">At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1191388.Sarah_Bakewell">Sarah Bakewell</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1878317734">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It begins with some hard slogging if you're not (I'm not) used to reading philosophy (any more) - but - once you get the focus, it is fascinating, especially once the personalities of the various philosophers begin to interact with each other's thoughts, lives, and politics. I was struck by how truly unpleasant some of the guiding lights of philosophy were, and how ugly their choices in the 1930s. <br /><br />I was also struck by how similar systems of thought could lead to different conclusions - such as how Albert Camus's decision to oppose the death penalty for war criminals conflicted with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre's support, and Sartre's support for a clearly totalitarian regime in the USSR after his experience as a prisoner of war under National Socialism.<br /><br /><b>My favorite quote came from Hannah Arendt after the execution of the Rosenbergs: "An unimaginable stupidity must have taken hold in the USA. It frightens us because we are familiar with it." Oh, if she only knew ...</b><br /><br />One star taken off because of the dense beginning (although, in truth, it's probably my own brain that was dense, not the writing). </span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-56513967656810203412017-02-20T09:58:00.002-08:002017-02-20T09:58:28.343-08:00The Orphan's Tale<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29239940-the-orphan-s-tale" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Orphan's Tale" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1477339189m/29239940.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29239940-the-orphan-s-tale">The Orphan's Tale</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/213562.Pam_Jenoff">Pam Jenoff</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1919375772">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Pam Jenoff, former diplomat for the US State Department and noted writer of historical fiction that focuses on WWII, learned about The Unknown Children and European circuses that helped to rescue Jews when she visited Yad Vashem. The two women protagonists in this novel, Astrid and Noa, meet each other and become allies - almost sisters - because of these two specific aspects of the Shoah. <br /><br />Pretty blonde Noa, driven from her Dutch home by her enraged and shamed family for becoming pregnant by a German soldier, is forced to give up her baby boy by a German home for unwed mothers. The only work she can find is cleaning a tiny train station, through which cars pass daily, carrying Jews. One day, she dares to investigate faint sounds from a stopped train. She opens the door and reels from the stench surrounding piles of babies, some living, most dead. No one is guarding this train; these prisoners are unlikely to escape. On an impulse, she takes one of the babies from the car and runs - and runs - almost dying in the bleak cold of a German forest.<br /><br />Astrid, a Jewish circus trapeze artist, had left the circus to marry a German soldier. He divorces her, one day, on orders from above: the Reich has ordered all Aryan soldiers to divorce their Jewish wives. She finds her way back to where a rival Jewish circus is rehearsing for its spring season; her own family's circus has been destroyed, its members probably shipped to camps or killed on the spot. The owner, Herr Neuhoff, remembering her from childhood and knowing that she is a star aerialist, hires and protects her to the extent of his power - mostly bribes of money and cognac to the soldiers whose inspections terrify them all.<br /><br />Noa and the baby, Theo,are taken in by the circus and allowed to stay - if she can become a trapeze performer. Astrid is tasked to train her. The reader meets other circus members, including a Jewish clockmaker and a bitter, disillusioned clown - once Russian royalty - whose act becomes too political for safety.<br /><br />The novel is told from two viewpoints - Astrid's and Noa's. Each woman is given extraordinary powers of description and observation, giving the reader a gritty, ultra-realistic experience of the life these itinerants have lived, and continue to live as they make do with rations, deprivation, and virtual enslavement in a country becoming more brutal as its power begins to wane.<br /><br />This is an engrossing, nightmare-producing, rich book. I read it in a day, a long day, punctuated by dark thoughts and tears. Rating it has been difficult. The writing is pungent and specific. But it fails, to me, in the sameness of the voices of the two young women, whose lives have been so different but whose vocabulary and phrasing are so alike, and in plotting, especially in the last third of the book. Nonetheless, the book is important, and gives the reader a glimpse into lesser-known aspects of the Shoah.<br /><br />I received this book as an ARC. </span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-74726799040897689772016-10-20T19:50:00.001-07:002016-10-20T19:50:56.855-07:00Field Guide to the end of the World<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29872928-field-guide-to-the-end-of-the-world" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Field Guide to the End of the World: Poems" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1460590928m/29872928.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29872928-field-guide-to-the-end-of-the-world">Field Guide to the End of the World: Poems</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/193548.Jeannine_Hall_Gailey">Jeannine Hall Gailey</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1735784322">5 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the world of Jeannine Hall Gailey's field guide, the end came with neither a bang nor a whimper. Instead, it seems to have come as the sun flickered and flamed - a wayward sun, with "chilled sunshine leaving its dying rays on your face as we waved good-bye, good luck, barefoot on the wrecked beach." Our guide tells us to "keep a steady eye on the whirling dervish of the sun" as she alternates between chronicles of the last survivors in a ruined world, and her lifelong struggle with her own genome, gone horribly wrong, turning her into a mutation ("We don't spout doll's heads from our wrists," she says), with her life collapsing like colonies of bees. <br /><br /> Don't consider me<br /> another mutant gone wrong, my betrayals in the distant backstory, my tears<br /> now flow a green ooze as I try to heal the land, cesium in the sunflowers<br /> goat genes welded into innocent corn. <br /><br />Near Fukushima, "former beauticians with Geiger counters test the dangers of homegrown carrots." That disaster, at least, could be studied and quantified, but could someone - or something - have seen the apocalyptic tipping point and changed history? "I never saw the Ferris wheel start its fatal roll," she mourns, and she "left out the open petri dishes of polio and plague next to the pasta." Was the tipping point so small, so homely? <br /><br />Interspersed amongst poems of frantic, last-minute grabs at normalcy ("is now the time for cake?") are postcards from the road. At "Appalachian Chalet," she is "next to a granite-strewn stream that gurgles amid sunbeams as if the whole world never went wrong." Martha Stewart collects drones, burbles about the romance of hurricane lamps, and says that "razor wire goes beautifully with your holly thicket." From an Anthropologie catalog, she finds "strappy leather sandals perfect for sand-charred paths... a woven bamboo suitcase as the future dissipates." From HGTV, she sees "a lone shoe on a staircase, the last vestige of someone's question: Take or leave? What, in the end, is essential baggage?"<br /><br />Our guide is observant, bitterly funny, and dying. She muses about Dorothy in Oz (will she become "an eco-warrior in ruby heels" or create "a new phone app: Angry Flying Monkeys"?) and skewers the soothsayers and dream interpreters who would, inevitably, crop up and see Signs. "Beware foxes flying out your window; fractals indicate creativity...If the angel is spinning, it's time to pay attention." In this world, the "rough beast" (prophesied by Yeats in "Byzantium" as the center does not hold) does not slouch. This time, it is "the limping birth of the rough end of a dark age," one she has lived longer than most.<br /><br />Once, she "looked away just as the plane plummeted." One thinks of Breughel's Icarus, in Auden's poem, as the ploughman never looks up to see "something amazing, a boy falling from the sky." "About suffering, they were never wrong, the Old Masters," observes Auden. Neither is our guide, who, seeing a baptism, says "you'll never be quite free no matter how you pray. You'll never claw the scales from your eyes." <br /><br />Or will we? Perhaps there will be survivors, people to "pass the crayons back and forth, telling each other once more the story of creation, stories of genomes, while the kind rabbits scramble over hills out of the sun." <br /><br />These are wonderful, chewy, imaginative poems that will haunt you and make you observe. Thank you, Serena Agusto-Cox of Poetic Book Tours, for including me in this round. Follow the link for more reviews.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-39252513862312672452016-10-17T12:59:00.002-07:002016-10-17T12:59:42.973-07:00The Widow's House<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30759310-the-widow-s-house" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Widow's House" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1470024212m/30759310.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30759310-the-widow-s-house">The Widow's House</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18130.Carol_Goodman">Carol Goodman</a><br />
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Very atmospheric, with undertones that range from <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17899948.Rebecca" title="Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier">Rebecca</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228296.Rosemary_s_Baby" title="Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin">Rosemary's Baby</a> to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/89717.The_Haunting_of_Hill_House" title="The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson">The Haunting of Hill House</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/816085.Harvest_Home" title="Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon">Harvest Home</a>. Not that this novel is derivative at all -- it's a truly engrossing and labyrinthine story of writers reconnecting with a former mentor in an octagonal house in upstate New York. They interact in the heart of apple country, with local folklore that may or may not be true, but certainly influences everyone's reality. As wonderful as <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18130.Carol_Goodman" title="Carol Goodman">Carol Goodman</a>'s previous Gothic-tinged novels.<br /><br />Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC.<br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-78262438467966831312016-10-04T08:45:00.000-07:002016-10-04T08:45:01.966-07:00Summerlong<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/474760.Summerlong" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Summerlong" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1472476628m/474760.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/474760.Summerlong">Summerlong</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1067608.Peter_S_Beagle">Peter S. Beagle</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1775584625">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A reader can always count on Peter S. Beagle to create a clear and gentle setting, one that the reader wishes she could escape to. In this case, it's an island off the coast of Seattle, with clear waters for kayaking, a long-established diner, and a long-established, older couple, settled into comfortable patterns. Abe writes scholarly books and works on perfecting his harmonica skills. Del is a flight attendant whose senses and sensibilities seem to provide clarity. Into this setting drops an enigma - an ethereally lovely young woman named Lioness - and the patterns slowly unravel as everyone falls in love with her. Even Nature seems to fall in love with her, as flowers grow wild and breezes stay balmy. <br /><br />But what is she? Where did she come from? How does she do - what she does - who is she running from?<br /><br />Beagle's descriptions are golden, as always, and a certain wistfulness pervades, as always. The reader might not be happy with the outcome of this novel, but myths don't always end well, do they?<br /><br />Highly recommended.<br /><br />I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review.<br /><br /><br /></span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-78648274116049605742016-07-03T18:54:00.003-07:002016-07-03T18:54:20.387-07:00The secret language of stones<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27274426-the-secret-language-of-stones" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Secret Language of Stones: A Novel (The Daughters of La Lune, #2)" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1467400842m/27274426.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27274426-the-secret-language-of-stones">The Secret Language of Stones: A Novel</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/69003.M_J_Rose">M.J. Rose</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1549558459">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another lush, exciting, total-immersion novel from the pen of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/69003.M_J__Rose" title="M.J. Rose">M.J. Rose</a>, second in a series (but completely self-contained). In this novel, Opaline (daugher of Sandrine, the witch from <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22608277.The_Witch_of_Painted_Sorrows__The_Daughters_of_La_Lune___1_" title="The Witch of Painted Sorrows (The Daughters of La Lune, #1) by M.J. Rose">The Witch of Painted Sorrows</a>) is a Parisian jeweller during WWI. Her mentor is a grieving Russian royalist who hopes that the Romanovs will return to power, and whose friends and family do what they can in exile to thwart the Bolshevik spies. Opaline makes artistic pieces and creates wristwatches for soldiers, but her specialty is making amulets of crystals and hair from dead soldiers that allow her to hear the voices of the dead, and to pass on their last thoughts or wishes to grieving mothers. <br /><br />There are so many descriptions of the jewels, the enamelwork (especially Faberge eggs), and fabrics, so many scents, so many scenes of Parisians trying to live their lives despite the bombings and the spies (German and Russian) who use ancient tunnels - so many! It's impossible not to be caught up in the narrative and to hope that peace and beauty will prevail, despite devastation, loss, and dishonor running rampant. <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/mjroseauthor/journey-of-the-page-6-the-witch-of-painted-sorrows/" rel="nofollow">Do take a look at the author's Pinterest page to get a sense of the times and places.</a><br /><br />I am looking forward to the next book in this series. <br /><br />Thank you, NetGalley, for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-89414639960272611862016-06-26T00:30:00.000-07:002016-06-26T00:30:20.454-07:00The Couple Who Fell To Earth<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29533877-the-couple-who-fell-to-earth" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Couple Who Fell to Earth" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1466686188m/29533877.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29533877-the-couple-who-fell-to-earth">The Couple Who Fell to Earth</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1219568.Michelle_Bitting">Michelle Bitting</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1678938693">5 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Once, when I was a teenager, I was called out by an English teacher for having the arrogance to bring <em>Finnegan's Wake</em> into into the classroom. "You can't understand that book until you've LIVED!" she said. Well, truth is, to this day, I haven't read it all, but now, as then, I dip in for the joy of finding a phrase that sings or vibrates or tingles. <br /><br />I found myself dipping into this book the same way. Although I read these poems through, more than once, and I could write much about their narratives, I find myself enjoying the singing, tingling phrases so much that they almost distract me. The poems that touch on the experience of writing, especially, zing out of the page. On viewing an ancient statue of a lion attacking a horse, Bitting writes <em>"There's a poem in here somewhere / And I'll kill what I have to to get it."</em> Musing on a favored pen, she says <em>"This pitch plastic wand / scratches the page / tapered streamlined / to say / what I want to tell it ... You're doing it again / pretending a pen / could crack those squawking sounds / like magic candy strings / wings and claws / scratching wet ink..."</em> She writes in a cafe (<em>"to confront my double Americano and the empty plate of a black notebook... we are still recipes short of sating hoards of unfed souls</em>"), and at home, in the early morning (<em>"the rest still hard at dreaming / in rooms light years away"</em>).<br /><br />We also see the poet as she remembers tearing open presents on Christmas morning( <em>"the havoc of never enough"</em>), investigating a mining shaft (<em>"click/ of my empty lunch pail / its skull licked clean"</em>, and investigating a park with her son. <br /><br />And then, there are those images that leap out of the poems, images that do not need context to grab your attention, like this --<br /><em>"...bright coin / tumbled back on blue pools that rippled open / like chakras on an amusement park ride..."</em><br />or this<br /><em>"The way Aunt Mary's sweaters smelled of death and peppermint..."</em><br />or this<br /><em>"...Even the terrorist's shoes fit feet just like your own..."</em><br /><br />However you read this book, whether for story or sparks of imagery, it will stay with you and move you. Highly recommended.<br /><br />Thank you, Serena Agusto-Cox, for including me in the <a href="https://poeticbooktours.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">Poetic Book Tour</a> for this book. I received an ARC in exchange for a review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-3180256322319975412016-05-30T09:46:00.004-07:002016-05-30T09:46:59.606-07:00The summer before the war<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25776122-the-summer-before-the-war" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Summer Before the War" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1443294379m/25776122.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25776122-the-summer-before-the-war">The Summer Before the War</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2995577.Helen_Simonson">Helen Simonson</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1633791400">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How controversial is a Latin teacher named Beatrice? In 1914, in the small English town of Rye, a woman teaching Latin is shocking. Shocking! Beatrice Nash, who was her scholarly father's assistant, travel agent, and budget manager until his death, has two choices: remain at her stingy and disapproving aunt's house, or work. She chooses work.<br /><br />Rye, although its more titled and tony citizens are conservative and easily shocked, has undercurrents of sophistication and modernity that Beatrice taps into immediately. She meets a serious surgical student, Hugh, and his flamboyant, poetic cousin, Daniel, both watched over and protected by their aunt Agatha. Her students include Snout, a Romany boy whose innate talent for Latin is suspect in his own community and the outside. Circumstances also bring her into the circle of notable residents, including a freethinking woman photographer, a novelist whose entry into social circles is blocked because of a divorce in her past, and a portly, portentous novelist who clearly is styled on Henry James.<br /><br />The peaceful summer is the prequel to England's entry into the War. Many local men are called to fight in the bloody trenches, hospitals, or officer corps. How the townspeople adjust depends not only on their wealth, title, and status, but also the emotional toll of expectations and loss. <br /><br />What will the dreamy Daniel do when his partner-in-poetry, Craigmore, is forced to enlist when his father hears Daniel's scandalous poem about his son? What of Snout, who realizes that his Romany heritage will mean that he will never have the opportunity to use his scholarship? And how will the haughty townspeople react to the hoardes of Belgian refugees they are forced to take in?<br /><br />The gentry set up super-patriotic organizations, including a chapter of the St. George Recruitment Brigade, in which fetchingly-dressed young women pressure young men to enlist, handing those who resist a white feather, symbol of cowardice. They also plan a parade and exhibition, including Daniel's model trench, tastefully decorated and supplied with shelves for books of poetry. Marrows are judged, young people pick hops and dance, students translate the Aenid before they march off to war. So it goes.<br /><br />The texture of life in Rye changes with some room for growth and tolerance, and with tragedies mixed in with the small but vital victories, both personal and political. As in Simonson's first book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6643090.Major_Pettigrew_s_Last_Stand" title="Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson">Major Pettigrew's Last Stand</a>, the reader gets to know this texture, and comes to care about - and root for - the townspeople and the town.<br /><br />Highly recommended. One star subtracted because the ending seemed disappointingly hasty.<br /><br />I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-16583811468346645832016-02-20T11:19:00.002-08:002016-02-20T11:19:49.798-08:00Journey to Munich<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25776606-journey-to-munich" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Journey to Munich (Maisie Dobbs, #12)" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1448215544m/25776606.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25776606-journey-to-munich">Journey to Munich</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5023.Jacqueline_Winspear">Jacqueline Winspear</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1553828150">5 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maisie Dobbs is one of the most complex characters I've followed in any fictional series, regardless of genre. In this book, the reader follows her as she accepts a request to go to Munich to rescue a British industrialist who has been imprisoned in Dachau for two years. She is still trying to process the tragedies that befell her in the last book, she has no permanent home in London, she has no profession, and she has suffered so many losses that even the lessons she learned from her beloved mentor, Maurice, do not seem to center her. Never the less, she accepts the challenge.<br /><br />Once in Munich, she learns that Hitler is about to launch his incursion into Austria, Jewish and Christian children have to hide if they wish to play together, and citizens can be tortured if they fail to reply to soldiers' salutes to the Fuhrer. She also begins to apply the meditation and visualization techniques that strengthen her resolve and her soul. She will need all the strength she can muster to find the industrialist, fulfill a promise to a grieving mother, and pull her life back together once this trial is over.<br /><br />I admire Maisie Dobbs for her courage, honesty, and willingness to be open to reality, regardless of where it leads her. I admire Jacqueline Winspear more, of course, for having the breadth of imagination and skill to bring this character to life.<br /><br />I received an ARC of this book from Eidelweiss. This is an honest review.<br /> </span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-49214990428494285272016-02-12T11:42:00.004-08:002016-02-12T11:42:40.654-08:00Devonshire Scream<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25685708-devonshire-scream" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Devonshire Scream (A Tea Shop Mystery #17)" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1438659362m/25685708.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25685708-devonshire-scream">Devonshire Scream</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/88924.Laura_Childs">Laura Childs</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538525381">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another delicious, fragrant tea shop mystery? Yes, of course! This time, Theo is catering a glittering jewelry show in her friend's store when a gang of ruthless thieves break through the windows and glass cases. Not only do the jewels get nabbed, but her friend's young niece is killed by a deadly shard. Over the next few days, Theo's sleuthing reveals many suspects, from wealthy yacht-owners to literary outliers. Will she be able to help nab the guilty without endangering herself or her friends?<br /><br />She also gets to serve up some truly splendid-sounding theme teas. Don't try to read this book unless you have a steady supply of hot, aromatic tea and nibbles handy. <br /><br />I took off one star because of a bit of haphazard characterization that really doesn't impact the story, but proved a little distracting.<br /><br />Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC. This is a fair review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-83031877380268431862016-01-25T10:56:00.002-08:002016-01-25T10:56:30.383-08:00Knitlandia<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26240620-knitlandia" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1452563711m/26240620.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26240620-knitlandia">Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/292412.Clara_Parkes">Clara Parkes</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1423660400">5 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Clara Parkes, whose first subject as a professional writer was travel, takes us on a tour of knitting and fiber festivals. Some of her adventures as a yarn evangelist are set in venues that thousands of knitters have shared -- Rhinebeck, Taos, Scotland, Portland, Maryland. Some tell background stories of festivals and events we dream of attending - Squam, TNNA, Vogue Knitting Live, Madrona. We are there at Sock Summit for the first knitting flash mob, we are in Denver to film "Knitting Daily" (as she is encased in makeup that makes her feel "like Ronald MacDonald in drag," and we go along on a tour of sheep-intensive Iceland. Always, there is pho, her comfort food, and yarn, in all of its incarnations and manifestations.<br /><br />My favorite moments are in Paris, where she breaks a promise (no yarn! just family!) and visits a petting zoo of a shop" that offers yarn and tea. Years before, she tells us, she fell in love with fountain pens in Paris. How can anyone not be delighted with this book?<br /><br />Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy in exchange for a fair review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-36241387552783472692016-01-13T12:28:00.000-08:002016-01-13T12:28:07.620-08:00<span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;">Be sure and visit me at my main blog, </span><a href="http://teabird17.blogspot.com/" style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;">Tea Leaves</a><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;">, where I write about life, liberty, and knitting - and the occasional book...</span>teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-36701904837645677372016-01-09T09:51:00.002-08:002016-01-09T09:51:56.151-08:00No Cats Allowed<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25489450-no-cats-allowed" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="No Cats Allowed (Cat in the Stacks, #7)" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431032536m/25489450.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25489450-no-cats-allowed">No Cats Allowed</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3237942.Miranda_James">Miranda James</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1502624159">5 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Librarian Charlie Harris and his <del>insanely huge</del> large Maine Coon cat, Diesel (so named for the quality of his purring) are trying to be civil to the interim library director, but he's such a conniving, foul creature that even the ever-affectionate feline can't abide him. The feeling is mutual, as Charlie learns when the mean man bans his cat from the library, fires people without warning or reason, and acts as if he is out to change the workplace into a gulag. <br /><br />If only those were the only problems facing the pair! The <del>cat-hating ogre</del> creep is killed in a uniquely library manner, to no one's real surprise or dismay, but the clues are pointing to Charlie's friend Melba instead of - well, instead of to whom? <br /><br />I've loved each of the "Cat in the Stacks" mysteries for their humor, cheerful depiction of small-town habitues, and - of course - the wonderful, vocal Diesel. Librarians will love the spot-on depictions of behind-the-stacks goings-on. Recommended to anyone who loves well-written mystery series. <br /><br />I was given an ARC of this book for review by NetGalley.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-85135581193951444532015-12-28T10:55:00.002-08:002015-12-28T10:55:39.766-08:00Knitting Pearls<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24724586-knitting-pearls" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Knitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1438351025m/24724586.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24724586-knitting-pearls">Knitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/24558.Ann_Hood">Ann Hood</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1361228320">3 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Knitters, in my experience, are readers as well. We don't just read about knitting, although many famous knitters are also writers who write about knitting. Perhaps I generalize, but I believe that a collection of essays about knitting is designed to appeal mainly to knitters, since the editor will expect us to identify and empathize with them.<br /><br />With a few exceptions, this collection will satisfy. Those exceptions are essays in which knitting is so tangential to the essay that one wonders why they were included, or in which the author calls knitters and knitting "...a chew-gum-and-walk-at-the-same-time crowd and an occupation ideal for a zombie. What does he know?<br /><br />Some examples of excellence:<br />-- Anne Bartlett, whose growth as a knitter and novelist includes designing an intarsia version of a Scott Joplin rag while editing a book about former cannibals. (Former!)<br />-- Jared Flood, whose father gives him an old, iconic sweater knitted by his mother, "a veritable Swiss Army knife" of crafting. <br />-- Clara Parkes, who sees her UFOs* and calls them "beautiful limerence of our first few rows rows together... my personal museum of optimism." (*for the muggles, UFOs are unfinished objects.)<br />-- Diana Gabaldon, who says "everything you experience forms you as a writer. Why should knitting be an exception?"<br /><br />Those who do not knit have insights, too - Jane Hamilton, for example, who lives on a sheep form, but chooses not to knit the beautiful, soft yarn milled from her flock. She lived for one summer with the last authentic creator of Harris Tweed, Miss Campbell. There, in the Outer Hebrides, she scraped lichen for dyes while the old woman spun and wove, selling fabric from her kitchen. Hamilton even knitted a scarf, but only because she was cut off from her family except for aerogrammes, deprived of radio and television, and forbidden by Miss Campbell to read. The scarf turned out so "...alarming that probably in this day and age TSA would shut the place down" when she discarded the thing at the airport. A novel is a miracle, she writes, and she has chosen "the miracle of language, the texture and song of speech... so absent on the heath" for her own life's work, her own material.<br /><br />The book disappoints in two important ways. The first: it is arranged alphabetically by author, not by theme, and thus seems haphazard. The second: what were they thinking? Including six knitting patterns without even line drawings to tempt the reader to try them?<br /><br />Recommended, in small doses, for knitters and for fans of the included authors.<br /><br />I received this book from Goodreads, and this is a fair review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-38144003044961574772015-12-24T12:26:00.000-08:002015-12-24T12:26:11.152-08:00Loving Eleanor<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27427416-loving-eleanor" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Loving Eleanor" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1446668090m/27427416.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27427416-loving-eleanor">Loving Eleanor</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20828.Susan_Wittig_Albert">Susan Wittig Albert</a><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1450884908">5 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This book is excellent on so many levels! As fiction, it enchants, as reporter Lorena Hickock meets, loves, and mentors Eleanor Roosevelt, whose aversion to being a public persona is transformed - to the benefit of the United States, but not always those who love her. How much time and energy can one woman have? <br /><br />Based on extensive research, including the enormous trove of letters between these two fascinating women, Loving Eleanor is a glimpse into the life of a pioneering woman journalist, and the times she reported on - including the most dire poverty of the Depression. Without Hick's advice, Eleanor would not have written the columns ("My Day") that endeared her to the masses. Without Hick's reporting (and company on trips to mining camps), Eleanor's understanding of how people were suffering would have been secondhand. <br /><br />Some of the details in this book, such as the lives of people so poor they could only offer a bowl of tumbleweed soup to visitors, are so graphic that your heart will ache. Others, such as the gradual realization by Hick that the post-political idyll she wanted for herself and Eleanor will never happen, are heartbreaking in a very personal way.<br /><br />I'm grateful to Albert for including endnotes and an extensive bibliography -- I want to learn more about both of these women, and their times. <br /><br />Recommended. Thank you, NetGalley, for giving me an ARC to read and review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-17017592775841753982015-12-20T12:26:00.000-08:002015-12-24T12:27:33.843-08:00Welcome, visitors!<span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;">Be sure and visit me at my main blog, </span><a href="http://teabird17.blogspot.com/" style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;">Tea Leaves</a><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;">, where I write about life, liberty, and knitting - and the occasional book...</span>teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-73363289718706975562015-10-24T11:05:00.003-07:002015-10-24T11:05:30.149-07:00The Lake House<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21104828-the-lake-house" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Lake House" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1439838913m/21104828.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21104828-the-lake-house">The Lake House</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/615274.Kate_Morton">Kate Morton</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1382178032">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Past and present mingle and meet in two English houses. One, a huge and crumbling house on a lake, was where a baby boy disappeared during a gala Midsummer's Eve party in 1933. The other, a small home in Cornwall, is where a widower resides with the tangible and ineffable memories of his beloved wife.<br /><br />Sadie Sparrow, a metropolitan detective, is visiting her grandfather, on leave from a case she took so personally that the violated protocol: the disappearance of a young mother, who abandoned her baby in a London flat. While taking a long run through a thick forest, she discovers Loeanneth in ruins, and decides to investigate. The locals have long memories and computer files that lead her to the lost baby's elderly sister in London, now a secretive and popular author of a long-running series of mysteries. She decides to allow Sadie to unlock the house, possibly to unlock the unsolved tragedy.<br /><br />Both houses are presences, especially Loeanneth,which begins to reveal its secrets to the motivated detective and the reclusive writer. Letters, diaries, abandoned manuscripts, and the crumbling artifacts of passions spent lead Sadie deep into the secrets of a once-vibrant family, broken by wars and loss.<br /><br />Except for the ending, which is a bit too tidy, this book is a splendid two-tiered tale, with homes that become characters in the spirit of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17899948.Rebecca" title="Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier">Rebecca</a>'s Manderley and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3102.Howards_End" title="Howards End by E.M. Forster">Howard's End</a>.<br /><br />4 1/2 stars.<br />I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley, and this is a fair review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-8169364780917010752015-10-09T13:57:00.003-07:002015-10-09T13:57:23.214-07:00The Hours Count<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24611708-the-hours-count" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Hours Count" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1428515151m/24611708.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24611708-the-hours-count">The Hours Count</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1651861.Jillian_Cantor">Jillian Cantor</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1409157416">3 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Whatever else you know about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, one thing is true: they were the parents of two young sons. Julius had already been arrested when Ethel was called to testify before the Grand Jury on 11 August 1950. She was not given so much as a minute to make arrangements for the care of their two young sons when she was arrested immediately after testifying. One minute, she was a proper Jewish housewife and mother, wearing white gloves. The next minute, she was in custody, charged with typing her husband's notes. Whatever else you know, going into this book, realize this: ultimately, she was executed for typing. Not stealing or passing atomic secrets to the Russians. Typing.<br /><br />The story is told by Millie Stein, a fictional neighbor in the apartment complex where the Rosenbergs last lived. Millie is married to Ed, a brutal Russian Jew, whose indifference to their son (probably autistic, lacking language skills) contrasts cruelly to the love and warmth in the Rosenberg family. Although Millie knows that her husband attends political - probably Communist - meetings, she is shocked to learn that he has known the Rosenbergs for years.<br /><br />Ed grudgingly allows her to accept an invitation to a party at the Rosenbergs' apartment after she and Ethel become friendly, bonded by their children and shared concerns. Ethel has secretly steered Millie to Planned Parenthood for birth control, which would enrage Ed, who threatens to institutionalize their son unless she has another, "normal" child. Millie has kept secrets for Ethel to protect her privacy in the neighborhood. <br /><br />Secrets are in the air at the party, where spying, lying, and politics are discussed by partygoers, including David Greenglass (Ethel's brother), his wife Ruth, and Morton Sobel, all of whom figure in the betrayal and death of the Rosenbergs. Millie also meets another (fictional) character there, a psychologist named Jake, whose promise to help her son develop language skills leads her down yet another dangerous, secret path. <br /><br />Since the events that lead to the arrests, trials, and executions are only glimpsed by Millie, it can be frustrating to pick them out of the narrative. Both her husband and the therapist advance the plot without significantly enlightening the reader, since each has his own agenda, and the reader is as bewildered as Millie. Some of those glimpses are so ordinary, yet so meaningful - Julius playing with his son in the park, Ethel cooking a chicken. Others, just as true, are horrific, such as the government agents scooping evidence out of the apartment as Ethel pleads with them to spare the recording she had made of her voice, hoping they would know what she sounded like if she was gone.<br /><br />Millie's plight as an abused woman who puts her trust in anyone who is kind to her and her son is vivid and heartbreaking, but her moments of clarity and insight into her husband's true business are made less believable by her ignorance of the world. Still, this detailed look at the last free days of the doomed couple is gripping and thought-provoking. The author provides a reading list. I care enough about the disquieting evidence of official malfeasance to learn more.<br /><br />3 1/2 stars.<br /><br />I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley; this is a fair review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-53660088429021768482015-09-30T10:25:00.003-07:002015-09-30T10:25:47.942-07:00The Gilded Hour<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24611868-the-gilded-hour" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Gilded Hour" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1425245254m/24611868.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24611868-the-gilded-hour">The Gilded Hour</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/41193.Sara_Donati">Sara Donati</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1340338808">5 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The gilded hour is that liminal time after the sun has set and before all the light has faded - a time to contemplate the day, and plan for the next. <em>The Gilded Hour</em>, set in 1883, illuminates the lives of intersecting families - a thoughtful but realistic police officer who is the son of Italian-Jewish immigrants, two women doctors - cousins - whose struggles to find acceptance and respect are complicated by love and the evil of ignorance, and four Italian orphans who are separated by forces that may be accepted in the eyes of society, but that do not stand up to loving scrutiny. <br /><br />The sheer detail of this long, dense, vivid book is one of its joys. Nothing - not the last stages of the Brooklyn Bridge, the ferry rides to an unimaginably rural Staten Island, the splendor of the Vanderbilt mansions, the hideous squalor of the streets - is wasted; all of it brings you into the story, breathless and fearful, joyful and expectant. The two cousins, one a Free Woman of Color, struggle against the medical mainstream as well as the forces of Anthony Comstock, which would deny women even the most basic understanding of their bodies and choices. That they accomplish what the do is simply amazing. Even the recent national history is important, as choices made during the Civil War continue to resound through the lives of every New Yorker.<br /><br />I wish there were more than five stars to award. I learned so much from this book, and I came to love the characters so much. It's going to be hard to wait for the next book in the series.<br /><br />Thank you, Goodreads, for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-2526455618795317792015-09-23T20:19:00.004-07:002015-09-23T20:19:47.791-07:00A Curious Beginning <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23160039-a-curious-beginning" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="A Curious Beginning (Veronica Speedwell Mystery, #1)" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1427165423m/23160039.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23160039-a-curious-beginning">A Curious Beginning</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/156327.Deanna_Raybourn">Deanna Raybourn</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1391185136">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Veronica Speedwell is curious, indeed.<br /><br />If you combine the scientific curiosity of Maisie Dobbs, the adventurous spirit of Beryl Markham, and the headstrong courage of Flavia de Luce, you won't come close to the vitality of Veronica Speedwell. This young woman has established herself as a world-class lepidopterist, travelling the globe with her butterfly net, a sharpened hatpin, and a carefully-packed carpetbag. She is alone, sure-footed, and satisfied.<br /><br />As this novel opens, Veronica has attended the funeral of her guardian, and has scandalized the vicar's wife (whilst drinking tea, "properly strong... I abhorred weakness of any kind, but most particularly in my tea") and planned to embark on new adventures, both scientific and amatory. Her disinclination toward the traditional Victorian woman's life is extreme, and she pities the woman who tries to fix her up with a widower: "It is not your fault that you are entirely devoid of imagination," she tells the sputtering vicaress, "I blame your education." Indeed. <br /><br />However, mysterious and nefarious forces have combined to snuff that idea, if not Veronica herself. In a matter of days, she is nearly abducted, thrown onto the unwilling protection of a handsome but surly natural scientist, and forced to flee London with the brilliant brute to join a travelling circus. Why do these evildoers want her? What is there about her background that makes her so dangerous? And does the mystery have anything to do with Queen Victoria's upcoming Golden Jubilee?<br /><br />Veronica and Stoker (the brute) are such a well-matched and appealing couple that this new series will undoubtedly be thrilling and satisfying. I recommend Veronica's maiden voyage (as it were) to anyone who enjoys a cracking good time in the presence of thoroughly enjoyable characters. <br /><br />I was given an ARC of this book by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.<br /></span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-84876374502513022912015-09-01T13:37:00.000-07:002015-09-01T14:27:53.987-07:00The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25029015-the-lemoncholy-life-of-annie-aster" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1425014753m/25029015.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25029015-the-lemoncholy-life-of-annie-aster">The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13548166.Scott_Wilbanks">Scott Wilbanks</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1213325645">5 of 5 stars</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This book has everything that I love: magic, time-travel,letter-writing, unusual characters who find each other and form a loving little community, wit, intelligence, historical verisimilitude, and smatterings of quoted Tolkien. <br /><br />I often say "If you liked <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9361589.The_Night_Circus" title="The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern"> The Night Circus</a>..." - I'll say it again. <br /><br />Utterly delightful. I read it in two days, and will read it again.<br /><br />Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC. This is a fair (and exuberant) review.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-84610542884944955362015-08-25T10:30:00.000-07:002015-08-25T10:30:11.990-07:00Swans of Fifth Avenue<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25279165-the-swans-of-fifth-avenue" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Swans of Fifth Avenue" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431898319m/25279165.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25279165-the-swans-of-fifth-avenue">The Swans of Fifth Avenue</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2958717.Melanie_Benjamin">Melanie Benjamin</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1315062504">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sometimes, even the wealthiest, most glamorous, most fêted superstar feels like a motherless child. Once Bobolink (Babe Paley) and True Heart (Truman Capote)were introduced, they were soulmates because their mothers, although present, were emotional bullies, leaving empty spaces and empty rooms that the socialite and the flamboyantly gay writer could fill with confidences and true vulnerability. <br /><br />They met before Capote's success with <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/251688.Breakfast_at_Tiffany_s" title="Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote"> Breakfast at Tiffany's</a>. She and her husband welcomed him into their world and opened themselves to him even more than to each other - only Truman was allowed to see Babe's unpainted, scarred face. Not her husband, William Paley, nor CZ Guest, Slim Hawks, Gloria Guinness, Pamela Harrison, or any other the other glittering socialites had a clue about the renowned beauty's inner insecurities. From party to party, social event to lavish vacation, Truman and the Paleys partied and gossiped and lived the life of true excess that filled newspaper columns about the rich and famous.<br /><br />How did it all go so wrong? After <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/168642.In_Cold_Blood" title="In Cold Blood by Truman Capote"> In Cold Blood</a>, Truman faced a writer's block so deep that only excesses of drugs, alcohol, and Studio 54 could distract him. Although his beloved Babe was succumbing to lung cancer, he used the materials he had gathered - the gossip, innuendo, backstories - and exposed Babe and her circle in a story he published in "Esquire" - “La Côte Basque 1965” - destroying the illusion of their beautiful lives, and, effectively, committing social suicide. <br /><br />Almost everyone in this book is seedy, gossipy, and unpleasant. Benjamin captures the rhythm of their language (especially Capote's) and the spectacle of their lives so well that you only realize afterwards that you have just read about truly awful people. The planning and execution of Capote's Black and White Ball are especially vivid, especially when the younger celebrities such as Mia Farrow and Penelope Tree leave with Frank Sinatra and the party collapses. <br /><br />Four and 1/2 stars - close to completely enchanting.<br /><br />I received this book as an e-ARC from NetGalley, and this is a fair review.<br /></span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1119657462677266955.post-21460438687643611432015-08-20T08:18:00.000-07:002015-08-20T08:18:00.731-07:00<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23847968-the-haunted-season" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Haunted Season: A Max Tudor Mystery (A Max Tudor Mystery, #5)" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1421837169m/23847968.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23847968-the-haunted-season">The Haunted Season: A Max Tudor Mystery</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1407724.G_M_Malliet">G.M. Malliet</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1356406914">4 of 5 stars</a><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was a little disappointed. Not that Max and the residents of Nether Monkslip are any less fun to read about -- their squabbles, their power-plays, <em>their baking...</em> -- but there were so many characters in this outing that they quite blanketed the murder. Still, it was fun to read about the annual Duck Race (not that they race actual ducks, you understand), the internecine doings of the village ladies, and the Baaden-Boomethistles - lord and lady of Totleigh Hall, with the utterly perfect Dowager, a combination of Barbara Cartland and "Downton Abbey"'s Countess Violet. <br /><br />I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley.</span><br />
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teabirdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01789062795176641187noreply@blogger.com0