Jamie Ford

Everytime I visit Jamie Ford’s blog I find myself laughing. Here is part of a post about how a research library wants him to donate his notes and early drafts to their archives:

The only problem is that my handwriting is so poor it looks like I did my note taking in the dark in a zero-G environment with my left hand while on speed. I’ve been told that someone would transcribe them. God bless ‘em.

He also has an interesting post about David Carradine.

Fire ~ Kristin Cashore

East of the seven kingdoms, The Dells are inhabited by monsters that resemble common animals except they are extraordinarily colored and beautiful. They also control human minds. It is this ability that causes most people to fear Fire, the last human monster living in the Dells.

And that is all I’m going to say plot-wise, because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. My poor co-worker had most of the plot described to her at a workshop (shudder) and I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who likes to have the complete experience.

I re-read Graceling before starting Fire, because I  have a bad memory when it comes to details. I loved it even more the second time and I was feeling a little bit grumpy about Fire being a prequel. I wanted more Katsa and Po. But once I started reading, I forgot to be upset. Kristin Cashore sure can tell a great story. As with Graceling, the characters are wonderful and even more developed.  The bad characters were bad to the core and one of them just gave me the chills. He is on my top ten list of evil characters. (Hmm who are the others?) Fire is a deliciously complex character. People expect her to be bad, but she is actually a very compassionate monster prone to fits of daring that make her best friend Archer a tad bit overprotective. And then there’s Prince Brigan. Sigh. He’s the kind of character you fall for right away, but he just keeps getting better. It’s the little things that he does that make him so endearing.

Honestly, I had some preconceived notions about the book. I thought the monsters were going to be silly. I couldn’t stop thinking about the guy in one of my graduate seminar’s who was going to write a paper about monstahs! But, Cashore  turned the idea of monsters upside down and they fit into her world seamlessly. Fire was one of those books that I wanted to devour and savour at the same time. Darn the powers that make that not possible. At one point, I just stopped reading, smiled and shrugged my shoulders because I was so happy to be reading something that good. I felt like the book was written just for me. Ok, me and a whole lot of other people. I hope you’re one, too.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane ~ Katherine Howe

There has been a lot of prepub buzz about this book. First of all, it has a beautiful cover and that gets me every time. Second, it’s about the Salem Witch Trials, a topic that has been ingrained into my brain as probably one of the first history topics I ever learned about, but this wasn’t the same old thing. She really took the book in a direction I didn’t expect. Of course, I wish there was a little more of the steeplejack. That was probably one of the best introductions of a character into a story. It was like the opposite of a deus ex machina. Did I really say that? Anyway, here’s a review that I did for work:

Harvard PhD student, Connie Goodwin, plans to spend her summer researching her doctoral thesis, but when a telephone call from her free-spirited mother sends her to Marblehead, MA to get her grandmother’s house ready to sell, her plans get a little side-tracked. Not only is the project more time consuming than she thought, Connie also finds herself caught up in a historical mystery. While she is cleaning the house, a key falls out of a family bible. Inserted in the key is a slip of paper bearing the name Deliverance Dane.  Dating the paper to the 17th century, Connie begins to research the life of this unknown woman. Her discoveries push Connie outside her orderly way of thinking and combined with an eery change in her Harvard advisor they make her summer plans more eventful than she had planned.

Katherine Howe is a descendant of two women who were accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials and her book provides a refreshing look at that time period.  I enjoyed how the chapters alternated between the present day and the 17th century.  Connie was a genuinely likable character even though I did want to jostle her a few times when she didn’t get things that seemed obvious to the reader – she is from Harvard after all. Her cynicism regarding the modern day witches in Salem resonated with me and at the same time it made her eventual transformation more compelling. A certain steeplejack was a great foil for her seriousness.

Reading about local haunts is always fun and I think Howe does a good job of capturing Salem and Marblehead. The history of the Salem Witch Trials is so much a part of our surrounding landscape that I often forget the details. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane makes me want to refresh my memory.

Woo hoo!

There’s a great interview with Graceling author Kristin Cashore on HipWriterMama’s blog. If you haven’t read it yet, you must. Okay, you don’t have to, but it’s really good and I know that it would have been great for me to have read as a 14 year-old girl looking in desparate need of a strong (make that kick-butt) heroine. HipWriterMama is so cool, that she gave away 10 copies of Graceling and I won one. Yeah! I had just finished it for the second time and was wondering how it could be that I don’t own a copy and now I will, soon. Many thanks!

Library Books

I think I’m in need of a desert island to finish all the books I have on the nightstand. Here are a few of the books that I brought home from work this week:

Most of these are under consideration for the genre study that I’m planning with a co-worker. None of them are on my TBR list, but I like having an excuse to read them. Of course, when it comes time to read the hard-boiled detective mysteries and police procedurals, I won’t be quite as happy. In the meantime, if you have any other suggestions for historical fantasy and/or historical romance let me know.

And a little something for myself…
I’ve been waiting for this one. It got such great reviews and I think the topic is fascinating. It’s about a French photographer who covers a Doctors Without Borders mission into war-torn Afghanistan in the 80s. I’ve read a couple of books about more recent events in Afghanistan including the Sewing Circles of Herat and a book about Doctors Without Borders called Hope in Hellso I think it will be interesting to read more about both. I’ve started it and I’m enjoying the period photography inserted in the graphic novel format.

Now if only I could convince my son that he wants to take a nap…

Reading Notes

For some reason, I feel so relieved that the month of May is over. It’s not that I don’t love Spring, I do, but it was a busy month. I’ve been doing a good deal of reading for work and there were times when it felt like reading was becoming a chore. I can’t believe I just said that. But reading under pressure takes a little bit of the fun out of it. That said, I had some wonderful reading experiences in May. In addition to the reading I’ve been doing for our Reader’s Advisory Roundtable, my co-worker (a genre maven if ever there was one) and I are preparing to facilitate a genre study at our library. My days as a not-too-snobby literary snob are over thanks to my exploration of genre fiction. For all of you fantasy readers, please don’t laugh when I say that I’m no longer an urban fantasy/paranormal romance virgin! Oh, how some of my former co-workers would be shaking their heads and wagging their copies of the New Yorker at me. Jeaniene Frost’s Halfway to the Grave was my first and I now have a serious book-crush on Bones. More to come on that later. The downside of all this fun reading is that I want everything I read to be fast-paced with a good romance. Ah well, I have to stay true to myself and continue to read (and enjoy) my depressing literary novels.

On another note, I wasn’t able to attend BEA (sigh) but I did get to see some great author events this past month. I got to see a panel with Patricia McKillip and Laurie R. King. It was a great discussion and I loved that Laurie R. King reminded me so much of Mary Russell or vice-versa. Our library also hosted Maria V. Snyder author of the Study Series and her latest Storm Glass. It was great to meet and talk to Maria. She was so down-to-earth and she had some interesting stories to tell about doing research for her novels. She actually took glass classes and horseback riding to get the details right. I think it shows in her writing. I can’t wait for Sea Glass to come out in the fall.

Eve ~ Elissa Elliott

Okay, I think I’m stretching here a little, but I’m counting this one in the mythology category for the Once Upon a Time III Challenge. I hope that doesn’t offend anyone. My apologies if it does.

Eve has always had an almost mythic quality about her in my mind. Adam and Eve seem to be somewhere between God and us mere mortals. But, Elissa Elliott’s portrayal of Eve both in the Garden of Eden and after the fall is so wonderfully human. Eve’s failings  – continuous questioning, a stubborn streak – are also her strengths and they are familiar human qualities. Eve’s story is told in a chorus of women including herself and her three daughters – Naava, Aya and Dara. Each of Eve’s children struggle with their own conflicts but the jealousy between Cain and Abel is something more than sibling rivalry. Why would Cain kill his own brother? Elliott does a wonderful job of filling in the gaps in their story. I felt that Eve was a sympathetic character even in the moments when her whole family seems to resent her and even when she can’t stop questioning even for a moment. Elohim says that is what makes her special and it’s true. I savored reading this book – a chapter or two at a time. There were moments when I wished I knew more biblical history, but the story was so  engaging that even if you knew nothing of Eve, you would still find this a compelling story of survival.

For more about Elissa Elliott  (did I mention this is her first novel?) you can visit her website. She has an interesting blog, too.

Storm Glass ~ Maria V. Snyder

Here’s another one for the Once Upon A Time Challenge. I’m so grateful to my co-worker for getting me to read Maria Snyder’s books. I have loved them all and I wish I could find more books like these. What’s even better, said co-worker has arranged for Ms. Snyder to come visit our library in May. So, looking forward to that.

First off, if you want to read Storm Glass, make sure you’ve read the Study Series first. It’s a spoiler for all of those books and you really need to know what happened in them to keep up. It’s nice, because Snyder doesn’t do a ton of re-cap in her books, which is something that drives me crazy. Storm Glass is Opal’s story and starts about four years after Fire Study. Because of Opal’s talent of blowing magic into glass, she is brought to the Citadel to see if she might have any other talents. Her classmates call her a one-trick wonder because, despite her amazing feet in Fire Study, she doesn’t seem to be able to do much else involving magic. Nevertheless, she is sent on a mission with Zitora, Second Magician, to discover why the glass orbs that the Storm Dancers use to gather a storm’s energy keep breaking. If nothing else, Opal is a master glass-blower and it is to Snyder’s credit that she makes glass-blowing or whatever occupation her characters might have absolutely fascinating. There are a few fun cameos, too. I wish I could tell you more about the book, but don’t want to give anything away. If you like the study series, you’ll probably like Storm Glass, too. Just remember that it’s a different story in the same world, not a continuation of Yelena and Valek’s story.

I love the cover for this one and for Sea Glass which is due out in September.

Easter Doings…

When it comes down to the holidays, I start to really feel like a parent. Well, that and when I have to count to 3 which I never thought I would do. Anyway, the pressure is on in a good way. Looking back on it, my mother managed to make our holidays feel extra special. When I compared easter basket staples with my husband, we had very different items on our lists. Of course, we are trying to limit the sweet things with my son until absolutely necessary, so he won’t be getting any of the hollow sugar eggs with the scenes in them that I so wistfully remembered. Sugar just sent me into a sweet slump whereas it sends my son bouncing around like a pogo stick. I digress.

I did make him some cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. My sewing machine did not groan when I used it for the first time in 15 years to make him this apron. And he actually liked to watch me “jackhammer.” Okay, so I made the whole thing right in front of him, but it was from me not the Easter Bunny. I got these cool wooden nesting eggs that came with watercolors and I made a couple of these recycled journals for coloring. He also got a whale shark that was much bigger than I thought it was going to be when I ordered it, but it makes a grand splash in the tub! What are your easter traditions?

Fragile Eternity – Melissa Marr

I am totally hooked on this series, which is just what I need right now. What happened to the freestanding books in my life. Oh yes, they are piled high on the nightstand begging to be read and not tossed aside for the latest installment of whatever. I will get to you soon. I promise.

As this is the third book in the Wicked Lovely series there are spoilers in this review, so stop if you were planning on reading them. Let me say that if you thought that you could just skip over Ink Exchange because it is about Leslie, Niall and Irial, that’s kind of a big mistake. Things happen in that book that are important to Fragile Eternity. Court politics and relationships are shaped in such a way in that book that you might find yourself  a little befuddled at the start of Fragile Eternity. Personally I tried to skip Ink Exchange (even though it is my favorite cover) and start Fragile Eternity, because I was so caught up in the story of Aislinn, Seth and Keenan. I read that Niall was the King of the Dark Court and said wait a minute.  How did that happen?

So, Fragile Eterenity begins with Aislinn as the new Summer Queen still totally in love with Seth, but Seth is feeling his mortality. He hates being weak – needing a bodyguard and being singed by Aislinn, literally. Meanwhile, Aislinn is finding herself drawn more and more to Keenan as the solstice draws near. While Wicked Lovely was mainly Aislinn’s story and Ink Exchange was Leslie’s story, Seth is the focal point of Fragile Eternity. So much depends on his actions. I really liked Seth up until this book, and while he did some things that make me anxious for the next installment in the series, I was so angry with him for most of the book. Because Aislinn is stuck between Seth and Keenan, she’s much weaker in this book. Seth and Keenan are both a little selfish and that can be frustrating.  Frankly I’m not sure who I want Aislinn to end up with, but I like Keenan more than I know I should. All things considered he is very patient for a faerie king and I’d just like to see what they might be like together. I know he’s selfish and has done some horrible things, but I’m totally smitten by the whole make you feel like summer just by looking at you thing.  Maybe she should just ditch the lot of them and find someone else? I haven’t heard anything about her next book, but this one ends in such a way that there must be another in the wings.

If you dare, there is a book trailer for Fragile Eternity on the Harper Teen site. Let’s just say that the casting for this one was not quite right. Okay, I was trying to be nice, but I can’t. It was horrible. There I said it. Pretty website otherwise.