Bread & Roses Award, RIP Robert Bly and Stephen Sondheim, Book Review of Method Acting, Highlighting Backlist Treasures, Give & Take Wall, the Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, The King of Koraha by Maria V Snyder, Wayward Moon by Devon Monk, and Sunrise by the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Today, the day after Thanksgiving, is a day to rest and regroup, and await my son's 22nd birthday tomorrow. However, today is also the day we lost famed musical theater master Stephen Sondheim, who was 91. We also lost the famed poet/writer Robert Bly. So there is heartbreak among the gratitude and grief along with the turkey gravy. Some of the reading I've been doing has been heavier than I'd like, but still, I'm enjoying the cold late fall days and the early dark, because it gives me the perfect excuse to cuddle up under the comforter and read. 

I've always loved the song Bread and Roses as sung by Judy Collins, so I was delighted to read of this award, given to a female writer whose book is about disabled people and their struggle for equal rights. My favorite line from the song is "hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread but give us roses..."

 Awards: Bread & Roses Radical Publishing Winner

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers named Ellen Clifford's book The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe winner of the 2021 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50420951.

Speaking for the judges, Karen Shook said the winning title is "a hugely revelatory account of the one-quarter of U.K. society whose struggle for justice is literally a matter of life and death, and of the determined, defiant disabled activists whose resistance holds important lessons for everyone on the Left."

Calling it "an absolute honor" to win the prize, Clifford said: "The Bread and Roses Award is the only award I have ever aspired to win because it validates exactly what I aspire to do--which is to use writing to explore ideas that can make the world a better place. I am grateful that the Award and that Radical Booksellers exist."

 Though I was never a fan of the "mens movement" which contained more than a few misogynists and a very sour and antiquated view of women as being soft and weak and worthless, and having a deleterious effect on men by "feminizing" them (as if that were some kind of curse, and as if women were not as strong and fierce as men!), I did admire some of Bly's poetry and his pacifist writings. RIP, to the original "Bro"

Obituary Note: Robert Bly

Robert Bly https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50430803, the Minnesota poet, author and translator "who articulated the solitude of landscapes, galvanized protests against the Vietnam War and started a controversial men's movement with a bestseller that called for a restoration of primal male audacity," died November 21, the New York Times reported. He was 94. Bly's work included more than 50 books of poetry, translations of European and Latin American writers, and nonfiction commentaries on literature, gender roles and social ills, as well as poetry magazines he edited for decades.

In 1966, Bly co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and toured the country, rallying the opposition with poetry "read-ins" on campuses and in town halls. He won the National Book Award for poetry for The Light Around the Body (1967), and donated his $1,000 prize to the draft resistance.

"Taking another abrupt turn in 1990, he published what was to become his most famous work, Iron John: A Book About Men, which drew on myths, legends, poetry and science of a sort to make a case that American men had grown soft and feminized and needed to rediscover their primitive virtues of ferocity and audacity and thus regain the self-confidence to be nurturing fathers and mentors," the Times wrote. The book was on the Times's bestseller list for 62 weeks, including 10 weeks at number one, and was translated into many languages.

Among the many media profiles of him was a 90-minute PBS special by Bill Moyers, who called Bly "arguably the most influential poet writing today." During the 1970s, he wrote 11 books of poetry, essays and translations. In the '80s and '90s, he produced 27 books, including The Man in the Black Coat Turns (1981), Loving a Woman in Two Worlds (1985) and Selected Poems (1986). His most recent book was Robert Bly: Collected Poems (2018).

"In recent years, he traveled widely, lecturing, reading poems and joining discussion panels, and in 2008 he was named Minnesota's first poet laureate by Gov. Tim Pawlenty," the Times noted. In 2004, he published The Insanity of Empire: A Book of Poems Against the War in Iraq, and in an introduction noted wryly that little had changed since Vietnam. "We are still in a blindfold," he wrote, "still being led by the wise of this world."

The Star Tribune noted that "in his heyday, Bly was known for making theater of poetry readings--reading poems twice, or three times, just because he loved their sound; reading other writers' work; wearing a rubber fright mask or an embroidered vest on stage; reading to the background music of drums and sitars. But despite his theatrics, he was always intensely serious about poetry and its importance in the cultural and political landscape. He was besotted by words."

In addition to the National Book Award, his many honors include the 2013 Robert Frost Medal, the Transtromer Poetry Prize in Sweden, and Guggenheim, Rockefeller and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships; and a McKnight Distinguished Artist Award in 2000.

From "Keeping Our Small Boat Afloat":

It's hard to grasp how much generosity

Is involved in letting us go on breathing,

When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief.

Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for

Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat

When so many have gone down in the storm.

 

This looks irresistible! I must get a copy, as I studied Method acting (and several other styles) during my time at Clarke College back in the 80s.

Book Review: The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

What a production! Isaac Butler has packed The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, his essential history of America's hallmark acting style, with tales of political intrigue, stories of stratospheric triumphs and epic failures, and scenes of backstabbing and petulance played out by--and this should go without saying--a first-rate cast.

Before the Method, an acting performance wasn't evaluated in terms of how "true" it felt. As Butler tells it, the seeds of change were planted in Russia in 1897 during a meeting between playwright and acting teacher Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and theater director and actor Konstantin Stanislavski, the visionary of the two and namesake of the future acting technique. The pair spent what turned into an 18-hour lunch "plotting a theatrical revolution": disappointed with the performances they were seeing onstage, they decided to start a theater company devoted to teaching actors to work toward a more naturalistic style.

When New Yorker and theater devotee Harold Clurman was visiting Paris in 1922, he was bowled over by a touring production of The Cherry Orchard put on by Nemirovich and Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre. Without realizing it, Clurman "had found his purpose," Butler writes. "In a few years, he would study the Moscow Art Theatre's techniques, and help dream a new era of American theater into being." With Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford, Clurman founded the Group Theatre in New York in 1931, attracting a roster of formidable teachers, among them the legends Stella Adler and Elia Kazan. Disagreements could turn so fiery that some instructors stormed off to teach elsewhere, but each remained committed to steering actors toward a more true-to-life style that would become, in Butler's words, "a transformative, revolutionary, modernist art movement, one of the Big Ideas of the twentieth century."

There were Big Egos to match. Butler, who coauthored The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America , doesn't skimp on the backstage dramas of the technique's best-known practitioners. The actors featured in The Method--among them John Garfield, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Kim Stanley and Marilyn Monroe--call to mind siblings bent on supporting and undermining one another in equal measure. Brando, for one, "responded to Dean's entreaties for advice with a recommendation that the younger man see an analyst." Too bad Dean couldn't have sought advice from Butler: his book amounts to a print-form master class in the Method. --Nell Beram , author and freelance writer

 I wholeheartedly agree with Ellen Stimson that there are some backlist books that should not fade into obscurity. I love that she talks about Jan Karon's and Pam Houston's books, both of which I've enjoyed in the past. I will have to check out Michael Malone, though I might have already read some of his titles, too, and I just don't remember them.

Comfort Reading: Highlighting Backlist Treasures

Ellen Stimson https://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50430842, author of Mud Season and Good Grief, has spent most of her life in and around the book industry.

Before she started writing her own books, she owned the first female-owned book wholesaling company so she has always understood the importance of booksellers. She is blessed with a wild pack of mostly grown children, not-so-wild but completely adorable husband, and a very civilized group of chickens, dogs and cats. She writes about the whole catastrophe from an old farmhouse in Vermont. And she plans to write occasionally for Shelf Awareness about some of her favorite books: backlist.

Ordering from gardening catalogs was a balm during the first long winter of Covid. I wanted lots of color come spring and butterflies come summer. Something I read about those much-desired butterflies during that frenzy of shopping stuck with me. If a butterfly comes out of its chrysalis too soon, it will not be able to fly. It will look like a butterfly in every way. It will actually be a butterfly, albeit one who cannot fly (which sort of defeats the whole point of butterflying). That resonated with me, especially as we all emerge from our pandemic chrysalis, many of us faster, but more of us slower than we expected. There seems to be some internal clock that needs tending, and that was even before the Delta variant came along.

Will it be another winter of comfort shopping, comfort foods, and, best of all, comfort reading? Rereading is likely the most comforting kind of reading there is. You know exactly what you are going to get with an old favorite author: you will likely be pleased again by the gorgeous geography, clever dialogue, relentless pacing... whatever drew you to the book the first time. Can booksellers highlight backlist titles just like new ones? Is it smart to offer bookseller recommendations for the backlist? Can the backlist be just as seasonal as any holiday list? I think so.

Michael Malone, remember him? There is practically nothin' better than a fall road trip with Michael. The geniuses at Sourcebooks repackaged them all a while ago so they are, first of all, beautiful to look at, but also hilarious as always. Dingley Falls is a character-driven romp. Quirky characters, bawdy nights and clever dialogue make for a pretty good way to ride out a stormy weekend. It's a long but fast 400 pages with a necessary four-page alphabetical listing of all the characters: Sidney Blossom, town librarian and former hippie; Louie Daytona, gorgeous bisexual sculptor and ex-convict. I mean, come on! Handling Sin, Foolscap and Time's Witness would be terrific for a series of chilly fall weekends.

Jan Karon's Mitford series is filled with characters who treat one another with kindness, dignity, and respect. Remember those? Yeah, me neither, which is why these books are such a balm, especially during election season. The first two, At Home in Mitford and A Light in the Window, were originally released by Penguin in paper but then Karon became such a phenomenon that the Mitford books became an annual big-budget treat for millions of readers. That success story maybe made us forget about the novelty and sweetness of the first two. You'll meet a dozen or so small-town characters who will remind you of your own favorite locals. These are the people we missed most during our Covid lockdown, and Mitford will bring them right back. These first Mitford books were quiet and wise, and it's time to introduce a new generation of readers to them this fall.

That reminds me. The original Pam Houston--Cowboys Are My Weakness--is a series of short stories with the interconnected themes of bad men, good country, and brave women. On the wild rivers of Colorado or deep in the rugged alpines of Alaska, our ballsy narrator falls for cowboys who are never worth the trip. Luckily she tells the stories with a sure and gutsy voice so we can bear them too. Houston's lyrical descriptions of the natural world are just right for autumn when nature lifts its skirts. So you can add in Waltzing the Cat and A Little More About Me, all from Norton. But the original, more than a quarter of a century old, was ahead of its time. It could have been written this year for the Me Too era and we need to be putting this book into young women's hands every day. Come election season they might just be ready.

 I absolutely ADORE this idea, and I wish the Sequel Bookstore in Enumclaw would adopt it, so people like me, who buy so many books a year, could get a freebie now and then!

Cool Idea of the Day: 'Give & Take Wall'

"Come visit our queer give and take wall today! https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50465814 You can pledge something for someone else or pick up an item if you fit the description," Under the Umbrella Bookstore, Salt Lake City, Utah, posted on Facebook yesterday. "Seeing people give to and take from this wall has been one of the most joyful parts of running the store so far!

"ID: a brown bulletin board called the Give & Take Wall." The process: "Give: Pledge anything in the shop to someone else. Pay at the counter and tape your pledge here. Take: If you fit the description on a card, bring it to the counter to receive the item free, no questions asked."

 RIP to the master of musical theater. God go with you, Mr Sondheim.

Obituary: The Legendary Stephen Sondheim has died today at the age of 91.

https://apnews.com/article/stephen-sondheim-musical-theater-a4ef685dd49259648991ebfbcef8bbbd

NEW YORK (AP) — Stephen Sondheim, the songwriter who reshaped the American musical theater in the second half of the 20th century with his intelligent, intricately rhymed lyrics, his use of evocative melodies and his willingness to tackle unusual subjects, has died. He was 91.

Sondheim influenced several generations of theater songwriters, particularly with such landmark musicals as “Company,” “Follies” and “Sweeney Todd,” which are considered among his best work. His most famous ballad, “Send in the Clowns,” has been recorded hundreds of times, including by Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins.  

The artist refused to repeat himself, finding inspiration for his shows in such diverse subjects as an Ingmar Bergman movie (“A Little Night Music”), the opening of Japan to the West (“Pacific Overtures”), French painter Georges Seurat (“Sunday in the Park With George”), Grimm’s fairy tales (“Into the Woods”) and even the killers of American presidents (“Assassins”), among others.

Tributes quickly flooded social media as performers and writers alike saluted a giant of the theater. “We shall be singing your songs forever,” wrote Lea Salonga. Aaron Tveit wrote: “We are so lucky to have what you’ve given the world.”

“The theater has lost one of its greatest geniuses and the world has lost one of its greatest and most original writers. Sadly, there is now a giant in the sky,” producer Cameron Mackintosh wrote in tribute. Music supervisor, arranger and orchestrator Alex Lacamoire tweeted: “For those of us who love new musical theater: we live in a world that Sondheim built.”

Six of Sondheim’s musicals won Tony Awards for best score, and he also received a Pulitzer Prize (“Sunday in the Park”), an Academy Award (for the song “Sooner or Later” from the film “Dick Tracy”), five Olivier Awards and the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2008, he received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.

A supreme wordsmith — and an avid player of word games — Sondheim’s joy of language shone through. “The opposite of left is right/The opposite of right is wrong/So anyone who’s left is wrong, right?” he wrote in “Anyone Can Whistle.” In “Company,” he penned the lines: “Good things get better/Bad gets worse/Wait — I think I meant that in reverse.”

He offered the three principles necessary for a songwriter in his first volume of collected lyrics — Content Dictates Form, Less Is More, and God Is in the Details. All these truisms, he wrote, were “in the service of Clarity, without which nothing else matters.” Together they led to stunning lines like: “It’s a very short road from the pinch and the punch to the paunch and the pouch and the pension.”

Taught by no less a genius than Oscar Hammerstein, Sondheim pushed the musical into a darker, richer and more intellectual place. “If you think of a theater lyric as a short story, as I do, then every line has the weight of a paragraph,” he wrote in his 2010 book, “Finishing the Hat,” the first volume of his collection of lyrics and comments.

Early in his career, Sondheim wrote the lyrics for two shows considered to be classics of the American stage, “West Side Story” (1957) and “Gypsy” (1959). “West Side Story,” with music by Leonard Bernstein, transplanted Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” to the streets and gangs of modern-day New York. “Gypsy,” with music by Jule Styne, told the backstage story of the ultimate stage mother and the daughter who grew up to be Gypsy Rose Lee.

It was not until 1962 that Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics for a Broadway show, and it turned out to be a smash — the bawdy “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” starring Zero Mostel as a wily slave in ancient Rome yearning to be free.

It was “Company,” which opened on Broadway in April 1970, that cemented Sondheim’s reputation. The episodic adventures of a bachelor (played by Dean Jones) with an inability to commit to a relationship was hailed as capturing the obsessive nature of striving, self-centered New Yorkers. The show, produced and directed by Hal Prince, won Sondheim his first Tony for best score. “The Ladies Who Lunch” became a standard for Elaine Stritch.

In 1973, “A Little Night Music,” starring Glynis Johns and Len Cariou, opened. Based on Bergman’s “Smiles of a Summer Night,” this rueful romance of middle-age lovers contains the song “Send in the Clowns,” which gained popularity outside the show. A revival in 2009 starred Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones was nominated for a best revival Tony.

In 1979, Sondheim and Prince collaborated on what many believe to be Sondheim’s masterpiece, the bloody yet often darkly funny “Sweeney Todd.” An ambitious work, it starred Len Cariou in the title role as a murderous barber whose customers end up in meat pies baked by Todd’s willing accomplice, played by Angela Lansbury.

“Sunday in the Park,” written with James Lapine, may be Sondheim’s most personal show. A tale of uncompromising artistic creation, it told the story of artist Georges Seurat, played by Mandy Patinkin. The painter submerges everything in his life, including his relationship with his model (Bernadette Peters), for his art.) It was most recently revived on Broadway in 2017 with Jake Gyllenhaal.)

Three years after “Sunday” debuted, Sondheim collaborated again with Lapine, this time on the fairy-tale musical “Into the Woods.” The show starred Peters as a glamorous witch and dealt primarily with the turbulent relationships between parents and children, using such famous fairy-tale characters as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel. It was most recently revived in the summer of 2012 in Central Park by The Public Theater.

Sondheim was born March 22, 1930, into a wealthy family, the only son of dress manufacturer Herbert Sondheim and Helen Fox Sondheim. At 10, his parents divorced and Sondheim’s mother bought a house in Doylestown, Pa., where one of their Bucks County neighbors was lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, whose son, James, was Sondheim’s roommate at boarding school. It was Oscar Hammerstein who became the young man’s professional mentor and a good friend.

He had a solitary childhood, one that involved verbal abuse from his chilly mother. He received a letter in his 40s from her telling him that she regretted giving birth to him. He continued to support her financially and to see her occasionally but didn’t attend her funeral. Sondheim attended Williams College in Massachusetts, where he majored in music. After graduation, he received a two-year fellowship to study with avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt.

An HBO documentary directed by Lapine, “Six by Sondheim,” aired in 2013 and revealed that he liked to compose lying down and sometimes enjoyed a cocktail to loosen up as he wrote. He even revealed that he really only fell in love after reaching 60, first with the dramatist Peter Jones and then in his last years with Jeff Romley.

“Every so often someone comes along that fundamentally shifts an entire art form. Stephen Sondheim was one of those. As millions mourn his passing I also want to express my gratitude for all he has given to me and so many more,” singer and actor Hugh Jackman wrote via Twitter.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles is the second novel of his that I've read, the first being his bestseller A Gentleman in Moscow, which I read with my book group. Though "Gentleman" received rave reviews and sold millions of copies, I didn't really think it was worth all of the hype...it was extremely well written, so that earned the story just accolades, but there were parts of the book that fell flat with me as a reader. This novel has the same classic style prose, as if it were written by Charles Dickens or Henry James or Herman Melville or Ralph Waldo Emerson. Plenty of 10 cent word choices and long, rambling sentences full of references to Greek myths and legends are the style here, with paragraphs that are nearly endless. Long, dense chapters and a nearly 600 page count means that this book is a marathon, not a sprint. The characters are also classic good guys and innocent boys vs evil greedy men matchups, so that makes the long plot easier to swallow. Here's the blurb: The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. 

First of all, the multiple POVs become really annoying when there's more than two of them. When Towles starts throwing in characters we don't even meet until the last third of the book, it becomes unnecessarily confusing. My second main problem, other than the length of the chapters and the redundancy of the prose (are there no good editors in publishing houses anymore?) is the stereotyping of the characters, which makes them seem one dimensional. No 8 year old is as sweet and good and studious as Billy, who is either a late bloomer or he is someone with Down Syndrome and unable to mentally process reality in all it's gray areas. His brother Emmett also seems a bit too "goody two shoes" and totally misses the obvious flirtation of Sally, who wants to marry him and take care of Billy. The character of Duchess, who is a guy, is a reprehensible, greedy and cunning criminal whom I gather we are supposed to fall in love with as the "handsome rogue" stereotype, but though his childhood was filled with terrible abuse and abandonment, I didn't really feel much sympathy for him, as he was always out for himself, and if others got hurt or killed as a result of his actions, he didn't care. "Woolly" was another character we're supposed to love, but whose ridiculous actions and stupidity made him irritating, and I felt that again, readers were dealing with someone who was mentally deficient (yet the author never tells us that Billy or Woolly have mental problems). Though it had a satisfying ending, I still couldn't give this massive book more than a B-, and recommend it to anyone who likes stories with 50s caricatures.

The King of Koraha by Maria V Snyder was the third and final book in her Archives of the Invisible Sword series. I've read not only the first two books in this series, but all of Maria V Snyder's books, and I've loved them all. Snyder's prose is golden, full of bright and shining moments and beautifully drawn characters in exotic locales, while her plots move at such a swift pace that it's nearly impossible for me to put the book down once I've started it. Here's the blurb: You can join me or you can die.

Hard on the heels of trouble in Zirdai city, Shyla Sun-Kissed and Rendor are ordered to report to the King of Koraha - a summons that is deadly to ignore. The King holds the key to Koraha's existence, but a formidable new enemy threatens Koraha's very survival and the King desperately needs Shyla and Rendor's help.

Wielding a terrifying and unknown magical power that can convert opponents into devoted soldiers, the mysterious army is hellbent on usurping the crown. Shyla and Rendor are tasked with discovering who in the seven hells these insurgents are. And what their real endgame is.

Trekking through the punishing conditions across the searing surface of Koraha, and facing numerous unseen foes and untold danger, they must follow the clues to uncover the truth before it's too late. The fate of the King and all the citizens of Koraha rests in their hands. 

There's more action in this book than most "action packed thriller" movies! It seems that Shyla and Rendor can't get a break from the crooked counselors or blood thirsty military men in this installment, and even though Shyla has a great deal of magic going for her, she still gets caught in Xerxes net, as does Rendor, her beloved. I must say that I saw the fascination with water and drowning by the desert dwellers hilarious and interesting, in that they've never experienced immersion in a body of water before (they must all stink to high heaven!). At any rate, it was a delicious ending to a riveting series, and I'd give it an A, and recommend it to anyone who has read the first two books in the series.

Wayward Moon by Devon Monk was a low priced ebook that I snatched up because it is the second book in Monk's latest paranormal romance/fantasy series, and I loved the first book so much that I've been waiting for this one with baited breath! Monk is my go-to author for perfect prose and riveting stories starring unique and fascinating characters...she never fails to deliver a good read. Here's the blurb: A deal with a god comes with deadly strings attached...

Lovers Brogan and Lula Gauge have traveled the haunted byways of Route 66 for almost a hundred years. Their deal with the god Cupid has brought Brogan back to life, but the return to the living world hasn’t been easy for him. What’s more, that deal left them deeply indebted to the god.
Now the god is demanding his due.

To honor their side of the deal, Brogan and Lula must find what Cupid wants found. The god hasn’t given them much to go on other than: find the rabbit that is not a rabbit. Do the right thing.
If the right thing involves facing down feuding werewolves, banishing vengeful ghosts, and venturing into the deep, ancient caverns beneath the Missouri hills, then Brogan and Lula might be on the right path.

But lurking deep within those caverns is an evil older than the gods. It is clever. It is waiting. It is hungry. 

Monks book series are like Doctor Who (with the exception of the Capaldi or the 6th Doctor years) in that I will always watch and enjoy them, no matter when they're on TV, even if it's a rerun from decades earlier. Mainly because the Doctor is always entertaining and fun, and you know you're in for a good time, every time. Monks characters are so real, you almost think you could walk down the street and meet them for a cup of coffee or tea. Her plots never flag or slow down, and in this installment, the characters were so unique I couldn't wait to see what would happen to the "rabbit in the moon." I love Lula, the female protagonist, though Brogan seems a bit too possessive and controlling for him to be the perfect mate...yet Lula faithfully loves him through thick and thin. I'd give this page turning tale an A, and recommend it to anyone who read the first book in the series. 

Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan is an ebook that I paid more than I usually do for Kindle novels, but in this case I was glad that I did. A romantic finding-yourself fiction novel, this book was sweet but slow in getting the characters from point A to B. Still, the prose was clean and the plot didn't meander too much. Here's the blurb:

New York Times bestselling author Jenny Colgan returns to the setting of her beloved Little Beach Street Bakery series for a timely and heartfelt novel set in a Cornish seaside village.

Marisa Rosso can’t understand why everyone else is getting on with their lives as she still struggles to get over the death of her beloved grandfather, back home in Italy. Everyone loses grandparents, right? Why is she taking it so badly?

Retreating further and further from normal life, she moves to the end of the earth—the remote tidal island of Mount Polbearne, at the foot of Cornwall, hoping for peace and solitude, whilst carrying on her job as a registrar, dealing with births, weddings, and deaths, even as she feels life is passing her by.

Unfortunately—or fortunately?—the solitude she craves proves elusive. Between her noisy Russian piano-teaching neighbor, the bustle and community spirit of the tiny village struggling back to life after the quarantine, and the pressing need to help save the local bakery, can Marisa find her joy again at the end of the world?

I liked the interconnectedness of the village of Mount Polbearne, and I liked the way that slowly Marisa opened up and let herself love again. Though some of the side characters were irritating, I found that most of them were like old relatives by the end of the book, in that you just learned to deal with them eventually. Plus, ever since I watched Poldark on PBS, I've wanted to know more about the windswept beauty of the Cornwall area of England. I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys cozy mysteries and second chance at romance books.

Main Street Holiday Box from Dog-Eared Books in Iowa, Oh the Places You'll Go! Movie, Book Bannings, RIP Petra Mayer, Mothering Sunday Movie, NBA Winners, The Girl Without a Name by Suzanne Goldring, State of Terror by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny, Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid and Private Property by Skye Warren

OMG Ya'all, yesterday was the premier of Star Trek Discovery season 4, and also the Kindle ebook debut of the second book in the Wayward Souls series by Devon Monk, titled Wayward Moon! So thrilling! I love it when two of my passions come together! So you can imagine where I've spent the last 24 hours...immersed in two of my favorite worlds, watching Captain Michael Burnham, the first woman of color to captain a Star Trek starship, boldly going out to find strange new worlds and civilizations with her extremely diverse and oh-so-cool crew and her boyfriend Book with his huge cat Grudge. I loved every minute of it, just as I'm loving Monk's newest installment of her Wayward series, as Lula and her husband Brogan begin their journey in this book in a thrift store that has magical items for sale! So awesome! Anyway, today here's a bunch of tidbits and 4 book reviews.

This is a great idea, and I wish that I could have one of these boxes from Ames, Iowa, which is a stone's throw from where I went to school in Ankeny, Iowa. 

 Cool Idea of the Day: Main Street Holiday Box

Dog-Eared Books https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50297234, Ames, Iowa, has introduced the Main Street holiday box, featuring four items from four different local Main Street businesses, including Little Woods Herbs & Tea, Z.W. Mercantile, and Oak Lane Candle Co.

"These local items, curated for the Main Street 2021 holiday box, are meant to give the ultimate feel of winter coziness," Dog-Eared Books noted. "In each box you'll find Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley, Royal Pomander tea, Honey Cream Balm, & a Hand-Poured Candle. Holiday boxes are available only for in-store purchase at Dog-Eared Books. Make gift-giving easy this year and grab one for yourself or someone in your life who you know loves to be cozy."

 I can't imagine anyone who doesn't love Dr Seuss, and who wouldn't want to see this sublime book brought to the screen. Sounds like they'll be producing another Cat in the Hat movie as well...which is exciting!

Movies: Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Dr. Seuss Enterprises and Warner Bros. Animation Group have set Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights) to direct a new animated feature based on Oh, the Places You'll Go! https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50298134, which is expected to debut in 2027. Deadline reported that Bad Robot Productions is adapting the book, originally published in 1990, "marking the award-winning production company's first foray into feature animation."

J.J. Abrams will serve as producer along with Hannah Minghella, Bad Robot's Head of Motion Pictures. Deadline noted that Oh, the Places You'll Go! is "part of a growing slate of animated projects that Warner Animation Group and Dr. Seuss Enterprises are developing, including a film adaption of The Cat in the Hat that will kick off the new Dr. Seuss movie slate in 2024 with Erica Rivinoja (South Park, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2) and Art Hernandez (Planes, Planes: Fire and Rescue) on board as directors; and Thing One and Thing Two (working title), an original feature-length animated adventure. Additionally, the hit Netflix series Green Eggs and Ham, another joint project, debuted its second season on Netflix on November 5."

This is reprehensible….banning and burning books is antithetical to what America is all about!

A Frenzy of Book Bannings' and the First Amendment

The precarious state of free expression and of the First Amendment was highlighted in the past week by what New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called "A Frenzy of Book Bannings https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50340212." In the Friday piece, Goldberg noted "an aggressive new censoriousness tearing through America, as the campaign against critical race theory expands into a broader push to purge school libraries of books that affront conservative sensibilities regarding race and gender. As Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, told her, "There's always been a steady hum of censorship, and the reasons have shifted over time. But I've never seen the number of challenges we've seen this year."

And this month, there's a new twist: two members of a Virginia school board that voted unanimously to remove books with "sexually explicit" material in them from system's libraries also called for the removed books to be burned, which brings to mind images of book burnings in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Among the many titles at issue in recent months: Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez, The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

Goldberg noted that "With the rush to ban critical race theory, conservatives already gave up posturing as defenders of free speech. Still, this sudden mania for book banning is striking. It's part of a broader attack on public schools, one that draws on anger over critical race theory, mask mandates and sometimes even QAnon-inflected fears about pedophile conspiracies."

Goldberg emphasized, "This spreading moral panic demonstrates, yet again, why the left needs the First Amendment, even if the veneration of free speech has fallen out fashion among some progressives. Absent a societal commitment to free expression, the question of who can speak becomes purely a question of power, and in much of this country, power belongs to the right." She again quoted the ALA's Caldwell-Stone: "What we're seeing is really this idea that marginalized communities, marginalized groups, don't have a place in public school libraries, or public libraries, and that libraries should be institutions that only serve the needs of a certain group of people in the community."

 RIP to a great bibliophile and lover of science fiction/fantasy novels. She was too young to pass so soon...she will be missed.

Obituary Note: Petra Mayer

Petra Mayer https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50349214, a books editor on NPR's Culture desk and "a proud nerd with a penchant for science fiction, comics and cats," died on November 13, apparently of a pulmonary embolism, NPR reported. She was 46. Prior to joining the NPR Books team in 2012, she had been an associate producer and director for All Things Considered on weekends, and also spent time as a production assistant for Morning Edition and Weekend Edition Saturday.

In a statement on Sunday, NPR said: "This is a heartbreaking loss for all of us at NPR, our member stations and the millions of listeners in the public radio family. Petra's passion for her work, her love for her colleagues and her joy sharing books with public radio listeners have made a lasting impact."

Senior v-p for news Nancy Barnes noted in an e-mail to staff: "Petra was NPR through and through. To say that Petra will be missed simply seems inadequate."

Mayer shared her passions "with readers and listeners through her reviews of sci-fi, fantasy, romance, thrillers and comics, her trusty on-the-scene reporting at Comic-Con, and her contributions to the Book Concierge, NPR's annual literary-recommendation tool. She brought her zeal to the guest chair on occasional Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast episodes," NPR wrote.

Mayer first joined NPR as an engineering assistant in 1994, while attending Amherst College. In 1997, she was briefly at Boston's NPR member station WBUR as a news writer, then returned to NPR in 2000, after earning a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and spending two years as an audio editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

"She is like the keeper of a certain wonderfulness of NPR," said Rose Friedman, a books and culture editor. "She is the spirit of the place." Mallory Yu, a producer and movie editor for All Things Considered, observed: "Her passion and enthusiasm was indelible, and she was generous about sharing both with you."

Beth Novey, a producer and editor on the Culture desk, added: "She was always up for anything--whether it was taking on a last-minute edit, dressing up as the AP Style Guide for Halloween, or making a hedgehog out of cheese for an intern farewell party. She'd been knitting hats for the new babies on the Arts Desk--and it's impossible to imagine even a single day at NPR without her."

In a 2018 Faces of NPR interview https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50349215, Mayer explained what she loved about public radio: "EVERYTHING. No really. We tell stories in a way no one else can, we lift up voices no one else does, we'll bring you the news but we'll also bring you the joy in a way no other medium can."

 Though I haven't read this book, it sounds like a stellar cast and crew...I will be keeping an eye out for it's premier.

Movies: Mothering Sunday

Sony Pictures Classics has released the official U.S. trailer for Mothering Sunday https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50349238, based on Graham Swift's 2016 novel, IndieWire reported. Directed by Eva Husson from a script by Alice Birch (Succession, Normal People), the film stars Odessa Young (Shirley), Josh O'Connor (The Crown), Olivia Colman and Colin Firth.

The film marks the English-language debut of French director Husson, who "began her career as an actress before transitioning to directing; her feature debut, Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story), premiered at [the Toronto International Film Festival] in 2015. Her sophomore effort, Girls of the Sun, premiered at Cannes three years later," IndieWire noted. Sony Pictures Classics will open Mothering Sunday with an Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles on November 17. It hits New York and L.A. theaters beginning February 25, before expanding nationwide in the following weeks.

 These two NBA winners exemplify what book awards should be about, reaching out to kids and adults who need to hear these messages of inclusion and imagination and the evils of censorship (ie book bans).

National Book Award Winners

Last night, for the second year in a row, the National Book Awards were held virtually, hosted this year by Phoebe Robinson and livestreamed from Penguin Random House offices in New York City. (Watch the entire presentation here https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50379489.)

The winners were:

Fiction: Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (Dutton)Mott said in part that he dedicated the award "to all the other mad kids, to all the other outsiders, the weirdos, the bullied, the ones so strange that they had no choice but to be misunderstood by the world and by those around them, the ones who in spite of this, refused to outgrow their imagination, refused to abandon their dreams, and refused to deny or diminish their identity or their truth or their loves, unlike so many others.”

Young People's Literature: Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda

Lo (Dutton Books for Young Readers) Lo noted in part that when her first novel came out in 2009, "it was one of 27 young adult books about LGBTQ characters or issues published that year. This year hundreds of LGBTQ YA books have been published. The growth has been incredible, but the opposition to our stories has also grown. This year schools across the country are facing significant right-wing pressure to remove books about people of color, LGBTQ people and especially transgender people from classrooms and libraries. I urge every one of you watching to educate yourselves about your school boards and vote in your local elections. 2022 is coming, and we need your support to keep our stories on the shelves. Don't let them erase us."

 

Book Reviews:

The Girl Without a Name by Suzanne Goldring was an ebook that I picked up for a cheap price, and after reading it, I was glad that I'd not spent more on this flimsy book that reads like a paint-by-numbers novel, riddled with tropes and cliches. The prose is juvenile, and isn't helped by the author using limited omniscient POV, which leads to a great deal of passive sentence construction. She also belabors each point she's trying to make with redundant dialog and views into the minds of facile characters. The plot, therefore, plods along, dragging each beat of the book out way past it's due date. Here's the blurb: September 1940. As the bombs of the Blitz rain down on the East End of London, Ruby and Stevie are falling in love. United by a shocking experience when they were evacuees, brave sixteen-year-old Ruby believes she and Stevie are kindred spirits, and they find solace together surrounded by the bombed-out shells of London houses. But when Stevie is posted abroad, handsome and smart in his khaki uniform, Ruby can’t shake a sense of foreboding. As she waits desperately for letters with foreign stamps that never come, she begins to fear that he is lost forever…

August 2004. Billie rushes to her father Dick’s hospital bedside. A terrible stroke has robbed him of his speech and he is a shell of the man he was before. Billie holds his hand, hoping her presence will bring him peace. But when she finds a crumpled black and white photo in his wallet of a smiling dark-haired girl she doesn’t recognize, Dick frantically tries to talk. Billie knows this is important, and she must ask the questions her father cannot. All she has to go on is the name he is just able to mumble. Ruby.

How is Ruby, a lonely East End orphan with no family, connected to Billie’s beloved father? What dangerous things has Billie’s father seen and done that he never told her? Who is the frightened young boy behind the man she knows? And can Billie lay the ghosts of the past to rest, even if it means revealing the darkest secrets of her father’s life and breaking her own heart? 

Ruby is a rube, an oh-so-innocent girl who becomes an even more naive and stupid young woman. Stevie is a classic asshole, an abused and mouthy kid who becomes an abusive, sexual predator young man. Billie's father, who suffers a stroke (which I felt he deserved, but he actually deserved to be in jail), is actually Stevie, who apparently feels bad about leaving Ruby to die after he spends a weekend raping her and leading her on, when in reality he has no plans to leave his wife and three children (Billie is one of them). Ruby, of course, because she's so "innocent" (and stupid) doesn't recognize that her old childhood friend is getting her drunk and raping her, and trying to force himself on her repeatedly (though it is clear she doesn't enjoy any of the sexual encounters she has with him, she keeps allowing it to happen because she doesn't know any better, and mistakes his abusive lust for love), and just focuses on her luxurious accommodations and her pretty dresses and too tight shoes that she chose for vanity instead of being able to walk in them. (insert eye roll here). 

Meanwhile, we're meant to believe that poor old Stevie can't help himself, due to PTSD, which is a load of BS, because he was a slimy little bastard long before he joined the army in WWII. The author also focuses on every grotesque moment of death and dismemberment of the London Blitz and the bombing of Palestine, to the point of nausea. It's like watching a repeat of a bad horror flick's more disgusting scenes...it goes beyond haunting into irritating. We also see things through the eyes of the cast of crass characters surrounding shallow little Ruby, including her filthy pub-owning aunt and uncle and her fellow evacuee Joan, whose sole purpose is to be a caricature of what a mother is supposed to be like, basically a stupid, oblivious brood mare. In fact, the only decent people in the book are Mrs Honey, who takes in Ruby during the evacuation, and the wimpy Joan, who cares about nothing but her family and all but abandons Ruby and Stevie once she's married (prior to that she's a little helpful to Ruby). Even the ending is ridiculous and unsatisfying. I've made it clear that this book is a waste of time and pixels, so I'd give it a D-, and recommend it only to those who find paint-by-numbers historical fiction interesting. 

State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny is a fantastic political thriller that will even have those who are not fans of politics (myself included) turning pages into the wee hours. The prose is clear and sublime, while the plot is intricate and yet fast-paced enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. Here's the blurb: After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has just been sworn in, and to everyone’s surprise the president chooses a political enemy for the vital position of secretary of state.

There is no love lost between the president of the United States and Ellen Adams, his new secretary of state. But it’s a canny move on the part of the president. With this appointment, he silences one of his harshest critics, since taking the job means Adams must step down as head of her multinational media conglomerate.
As the new president addresses Congress for the first time, with Secretary Adams in attendance, Anahita Dahir, a young foreign service officer (FSO) on the Pakistan desk at the State Department, receives a baffling text from an anonymous source.

Too late, she realizes the message was a hastily coded warning.
What begins as a series of apparent terrorist attacks is revealed to be the beginning of an international chess game involving the volatile and Byzantine politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the race to develop nuclear weapons in the region; the Russian mob; a burgeoning rogue terrorist organization; and an American government set back on its heels in the international arena.

As the horrifying scale of the threat becomes clear, Secretary Adams and her team realize it has been carefully planned to take advantage of four years of an American government out of touch with international affairs, out of practice with diplomacy, and out of power in the places where it counts the most.
To defeat such an intricate, carefully constructed conspiracy, it will take the skills of a unique team: a passionate young FSO; a dedicated journalist; and a smart, determined, but as yet untested new secretary of state.
State of Terror is a unique and utterly compelling international thriller cowritten by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 67th secretary of state, and Louise Penny, a multiple award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling novelist.

I agree that this novel was compelling and fascinating, though some of the characters are thinly-disguised versions of real politicians (such as Eric Dunn, stupid and evil, being the stand in for former president Donald Trump) and I would guess that many of the situations of terrorism around the world are close to what actually happened during Hillary Clinton's reign as Secretary of State. I loved that Louise Penny was able to sneak in her beloved character Inspector Gamache toward the end of the book. I also found it interesting that SecState Ellen Adams has a son who is Muslim and a journalist, who falls in love with a Pakistani FSO. Adam's daughter is heir to her media empire, and due to the way that Hillary Clinton was often vilified in the press, I was surprised that they get a fair shake in the book. While I won't spoil the ending for you, I will say that it was worth every hairpin turn of the plot. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to readers who like political thrillers or just plain thrilling, fast paced stories. 

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is the December book for my Library book group, and I was surprised by how much I liked it, considering it's the fictional biography of a rock band that makes it to the top in the 1970s/80s. I was a teenager during that era, and I loved listening to popular rock music, so the story of Daisy Jones and the bands squabbles seemed very realistic to me, because I read Rolling Stone and other magazine/newspaper articles about my favorite bands at the time. I gather that Reid used Stevie Nicks as something of a template or outline for Daisy Jones, but in my head, I kept hearing Ann and Nancy Wilson's sublime music as they toured the world with the band "Heart," which was all guys except for the sisters. Here's the blurb: A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup. Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice. 

Though I found more parallels with Heart than with Fleetwood Mac, I have to admit that the songs I heard in my head while I read this book were "Dreams" and "Gypsy," sung by Stevie Nicks (from Fleetwood Mac) in her deep and distinctive voice. Once you've heard Nicks sobbing, "have you any dreams you'd like to sell" (dreams of loneliness like a heartbeat drives you mad/in the stillness of the memories of what you had/and what you lost) out of a speaker either on a record player on over the airwaves of the radio, you'll be haunted by it for the rest of your life, trust me. Since most of the book was dialog from interviews, the pages fly by, and it took me about 4 hours to read the entire novel. Though it was melancholy and moody, it was still a pleasure to revisit the late 70s as a time of some breakthrough rock and roll bands and music. Everything now is electronically enhanced, so it doesn't seem as real and raw as music was back then. But anyway, I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who loved the music of the 70s.

Private Property by Skye Warren was another cheap ebook that grabbed my attention, and I had high hopes for it, based on the reviews I read on Amazon and Goodreads. I was surprised, then, when this contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre became instead a mashup of Jane Eyre and 50 Shades of Gray, complete with an abusive and pedophile billionaire who finds ways to get off on practicing light BDSM on his Latina nanny (who, because she's young and innocent, of course allows him to do anything he wants to her...yuck. Male rape fantasies are just revolting). Here's the blurb: When I signed up for the nanny agency, I didn't expect a remote mansion on a windswept cliff. Or a brooding billionaire who resents his new role.

His brother's death means he's now in charge of a moody seven year old girl. She's lashing out at the world, but I can handle her. I have to. I need the money to finish my college degree. As long as I can avoid the boss who alternately mocks me and coaxes me to reveal my darkest secrets.
"An insanely absorbing and addicting contemporary tale reminiscent of Jane Eyre with all the sex and secrets you never knew you needed." -- #1 New York Times bestselling author Rachel Van Dyken

Private Property is a full-length contemporary novel from New York Times bestselling author Skye Warren about secrets and redemption. It's the first book in the emotional Rochester trilogy. 

I completely disagree that this book is about "secrets and redemption," it's about a rich asshole who takes advantage of his young Latina governess to act out his humiliation and domination fantasies. Not that she's unwilling, because of course she's attracted to someone with so much money and power...aren't all girls overawed by such things? (no, is the answer to that question, and it's sexist and racist to think that they are). When she's not drooling over Rochester, who hates everyone, including his daughter, (and himself) she makes some halfway decent progress in helping her young charge get her school work done and move slowly out of her grief over the death of her mother. The prose is okay, though a bit overwrought (especially during the long sex scenes) and the plot is sufficient, though the ending is abrupt and poorly written. Therefore I'd give this book a C- and recommend it to anyone who really liked the horrible 50 Shades books, and those who don't mind bad reworkings of the classics. 

 

The Power of the Dog Movie, Maid Makes a Difference, Costco Picks Better Off Dead, Will Smith Launches Memoir at Bookstore in PA, All The Flowers in Paris by Sarah Jio, The Wicked and the Dead by Melissa Marr, Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey and Rocky Mountain Rescue by Elle James

Good Evening book lovers! We're almost halfway through November already, and finally its cool and rainy outside, and I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving, Birthdays and Christmas. I've been reading a lot of free or cheap ebooks on my Kindle, and watching movies and TV series that are based on books. I just finished watching a movie on Netflix called "Something Borrowed" based on a book by Emily Giffin. It starred Kate Hudson and Ginnifer Goodwin and was pretty fun for a later-day rom com, which always seem to be fairly cynical these days. Anyway, here's a bunch of tidbits and some reviews. 

I'm looking forward to watching this on Netflix next month.

Movies: The Power of the Dog

A trailer has been released for The Power of the Dog https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50204957, the Jane Campion Western based on Thomas Savage's 1968 novel "that has been gearing up for Oscar season push since premiering at the Venice Film Festival," Deadline reported.

Campion wrote the script for the movie, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst and Cody Smit-McPhee. The cast also includes Thomasin McKenzie, Frances Conroy, Keith Carradine, Peter Carroll and Adam Beach. The Power of the Dog will get a theatrical release later this month before hitting Netflix December 1.

The film is written and directed by Campion, who also produces with Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Roger Frappier and Tanya Seghatchian. Ari Wegner is the DP and Peter Scibberas the editor. The music was composed by Jonny Greenwood.

I think this is a great idea for a fundraiser to help single moms, though this particular book had problems inherent in it, IMO.

Fact and Fiction Books, Stephanie Land & Making a Difference

"One of our greatest joys is the ability to make a difference  in other people's lives," Fact and Fiction Books https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50262566, Missoula, Mont., posted on Facebook yesterday in sharing the news about a recent promotion involving Stephanie Land's book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive, which was adapted into a recently released Netflix limited series.

"Books can make people feel seen and be a tool for nourishing empathy and compassion," the bookseller continued. "Sometimes the fruits of our labor to support our community are quiet and under the radar, but sometimes, a local author makes a splash on the national and global scene in a way that screams from the mountaintops of our community.

"Since the series based on Stephanie Land's bestselling book was released, we have been processing orders, packing, and shipping signed and personalized copies all over the nation and the world. Today, we had the pleasure of writing a check to donate a portion of the profits of those sales to Mountain Home https://www.shelf awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50262567, a Missoula non-profit that helps single mothers. Thank you to Stephanie for working with us, to Mountain Home for everything you do, and to all our customers for keeping us thriving in our beautiful community. We love you all."

I've actually read a couple of Jack Reacher books, and I enjoyed them, much to my surprise...they were fast paced action thrillers, so there wasn't a lot of subtext, but it was kind of refreshing, if you can ignore the sexism. 

Costco Picks: Better Off Dead

Alex Kanenwisher, book buyer at Costco, has selected Better Off Dead by Lee Child and Andrew Child as the pick for November. In Costco Connection, which goes to many of the warehouse club's members, Kanenwisher writes: "He's a modern-day knight-errant. The Lone Ranger, Zorro and Robin Hood all rolled into one. And about as big as they would all be together. He's Jack Reacher, and he's been righting injustices and defending the weak from the powerful since 1997. The 26th book in the series, Better Off Dead, is out now.

"Reacher comes to the aid of a woman trying to find her brother, who may or may not be dead, and who may or may not be a terrorist."While Reacher is 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds, sheer power is never in question. What I love about his actions, though, is the brainpower behind them. He never acts without reason."

Incidentally the current issue of Costco Connection has a cover feature about Paul McCartney's The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, the first time in our memory that a book was highlighted on the cover.

 I've been a fan of Will Smith's work for decades. I find him funny and thoughtful and sincere, and I look forward to reading his memoir.

Will Smith Launches Memoir at Harriett's Bookshop in Philadelphia

Actor, producer, musician and now author Will Smith launched an international book tour Monday for his new memoir, Will (Penguin Press), at Harriett's Bookstore https://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50296105 in Philadelphia, Pa. WHYY reported that "about a hundred people waited for him to arrive, listening to a DJ spin old-school hip-hop on the sidewalk.... An entourage of five black SUVs pulled up outside the store. As everyone's attention swung to the street, security guards opened the door for Smith who pushed through the crowd, dutifully taking selfies with fans and autographing vinyl records, CD cases, and sundry merchandise related to his 35-year career in music, television, and movies."

"The only book for sale in our shop for the next few days is Will's book," said owner Jeannine A. Cook. "Our bookshop was only six weeks old when the pandemic hit. Right? For somebody like that to come in and make sure that a Black woman-owned bookshop is doing well and thriving, it means a whole lot to us."

The whole event, lasting about two hours, was billed as a protest https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50296109 by the owner, Cook. She put some of her employees on the street holding signs among Smith's fans: 'This Is A Protest.' "

"The word protest has been minimized. It has lost a way. A protest could be many things," she said. "Why can't a book launch be a protest? Why can't me telling my story be a protest? It's really about a protest of one: me walking my walk and doing things the way that I feel called to do them is my personal protest. That's what Will has done with the book."

All The Flowers in Paris by Sarah Jio is a bittersweet historical romance that will get you in the feels before you're even through the first few chapters. I've read more than a few books by Jio, as I like her writing style and her way with characters, and this short novel was no exception...it kept me turning pages into the wee hours. Here's the blurb: Two women are connected across time by the city of Paris, a mysterious stack of love letters, and shocking secrets sweeping from World War II to the present—for readers of Sarah’s Key and The Nightingale.

When Caroline wakes up in a Paris hospital with no memory of her past, she’s confused to learn that for years she’s lived a sad, reclusive life in a sprawling apartment on the rue Cler. Slowly regaining vague memories of a man and a young child, she vows to piece her life back together—though she can’t help but feel she may be in danger. A budding friendship with the chef of a charming nearby restaurant takes her mind off her foggy past, as does a startling mystery from decades prior.

In Nazi-occupied Paris, a young widow named Céline is trying to build a new life for her daughter while working in her father’s flower shop and hoping to find love again. Then a ruthless German officer discovers her Jewish ancestry and Céline is forced to play a dangerous game to secure the safety of her loved ones. When her worst fears come true, she must fight back in order to save the person she loves most: her daughter.
When Caroline discovers Céline’s letters tucked away in a closet, she realizes that her apartment harbors dark secrets—and that she may have more in common with Céline than she could have ever imagined.

All the Flowers in Paris is an emotionally captivating novel rooted in the resiliency and strength of the human spirit, the steadfastness of a mother’s love, and the many complex layers of the heart—especially its capacity to forgive.
I read a lot of WWII fiction with romantic undertones or a strong romantic theme, and most of them do the same thing, of having one woman in the past who ends up being linked to a troubled woman of today. These plots most always follow the same path, the same outline, and they end the same way. Jio manages to keep this trope fresh, however, by allowing us to delve deeper into the emotional lives of Celine and Caroline. Jio's prose is fluid and elegant, which suits her well constructed plot to a T. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who is interested in WWII occupied France, and how it has echoes in the France of today.

The Wicked and the Dead by Melissa Marr is a supernatural urban fantasy involving a woman who is part "undead" and part witch with powers that become stronger as the book progresses. I was surprised that an author as prolific as Marr has such immature and uneven, static prose that follows a meandering, often confusing plot. Here's the blurb: Enter a new faery world written by the author of the internationally bestselling Wicked Lovely series...for readers of Patricia Briggs, Chloe Neill, and Jeaniene Frost.

Half witch, half killer, wholly unprepared for a Faery Bargain...Geneviève Crowe makes her living beheading the dead in near-future New Orleans. But now, her magic’s gone sideways, and the only person strong enough to help her is the one man who could tempt her to think about picket fences: Eli Stonecroft, a faery bar-owner in New Orleans. When human businessmen start turning up as draugar, both the queen of the again-walkers and the wealthy son of one of the victims, hire Geneviève to figure it out. She works to keep her magic in check, the dead from crawling out of their graves, and enough money for a future that might be a lot longer than she’d like. Neither her heart nor her life are safe now that she’s juggling a faery, murder, and magic.
 

This book read like some newbie self published vampire/gothic horror fiction fan decided to try and one up authors like Lilith Saintcrow or Robin McKinley, and failed. I struggled to get past the typos and unlikeable protagonist (who is, of course, sexually irresistible to nearly all the men she encounters) but at several points I just had to stop reading because I was bored or indifferent to the plight of Gen the sexy half witch/half vampire and her fae boyfriend who pants and drools over her in every other sentence. Ick. I'd give this book a C, and recommend it to anyone who just loves vampires and witches and fae men who are so obsessed with the heroine that they call them "bon bon" and other confectionary nicknames. Shudder.

Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey is a cozy lesbian romance that is fun and sweet and full of lively characters. The prose is clean and bright, and the plot swift and sure, and I loved the characters, who seemed real enough that I almost felt I could ask them out for a drink. Here's the blurb: From award-winning author Rachel Lacey comes a playful romance about a Manhattan bookstore owner and a reclusive author who love to hate—and hate to love—each other.

Books are Rosie Taft’s life. And ever since she took over her mother’s beloved Manhattan bookstore, they’ve become her home too. The only thing missing is her own real-life romance like the ones she loves to read about, and Rosie has an idea of who she might like to sweep her off her feet. She’s struck up a flirty online friendship with lesbian romance author Brie, and what could be more romantic than falling in love with her favorite author?

Jane Breslin works hard to keep her professional and personal lives neatly separated. By day, she works for the family property development business. By night, she puts her steamier side on paper under her pen name: Brie. Jane hasn’t had much luck with her own love life, but her online connection with a loyal reader makes Jane wonder if she could be the one.

When Rosie learns that her bookstore’s lease has been terminated by Jane’s family’s business, romance moves to the back burner. Even though they’re at odds, there’s no denying the sparks that fly every time they’re together. When their online identities are revealed, will Jane be able to write her way to a happy ending, or is Rosie’s heart a closed book?

The build up to Rosie and Jane's hook up was scorching hot, and I loved the fact that Rosie realized that she couldn't hold on to her old store, so she found a new and cozy spot for her legendary bookstore, and once she was settled she realized that her relationship with Jane was just as important as her professional life. Jane, I felt, should have grown a spine much sooner than she did, and left the family firm well before she became so numb and burned out on their draconian real estate policies.  But, all's well that ends well, and I was delighted and uplifted by this book. I'd give it an A and recommend it to anyone looking for LGBTQ romances that are complex and inspiring.

Rocky Mountain Rescue by Elle James is a multicultural military romance that touches on serious subjects that might be triggers for those who have undergone sexual assault/abuse. Though a rape survivor myself, I was glad to read a romance that wasn't all hearts and flowers and pretty petite blondes and their huge ripped alpha male boyfriends going at it like bunnies. This book talks about the real problem of women in the military being raped and beaten, and in the case of the protagonist, buried alive. There's real pain and grief evident there, and yet I felt that the author should have allowed the female protagonist more time to work on her trauma instead of putting her into a strongly sexual relationship mere months after her sexual abuse at the hands of two military men who then track her down and try to kill her again to get rid of loose ends. Here's the blurb: Former Green Beret Max Thornton’s career ended when he fell two hundred and fifty feet during a training exercise and broke nearly every bone in his body. Left with a permanent limp and in need of a job, he is recruited by Brotherhood Protectors where he can use his combat training and skills to protect, guard and rescue others. He didn’t expect his first assignment to be the resident mechanic. Nor did he expect the mechanic to be a spitfire of a female with a whole lot of anger.

Josephina Angelica Barrera-Ramirez or JoJo, as her friends call her, prefers to be left alone with the work she does on the machinery and vehicles of the Lost Valley Ranch. Suffering from situational amnesia brought on by an attack she sustained during a deployment to Afghanistan, she’s touchy about being touched and doesn’t take flak from anyone. When she becomes the target of a killer, a former Green Beret is assigned as her bodyguard. Forced to have the Green Beret around, her distrust of men is challenged and the wall around her heart crumbles.
When danger threatens, Max and JoJo must fight their own fears to defeat evil while losing the battle of their hearts to win a future together. 

I felt, as I said before, that this relationship was unrealistically rushed in that most survivors of rape/beating/left for dead and buried alive wouldn't be ready for any relationship, let alone a sexual one with a former military man, because they would feel broken and fearful and most likely dislike being touched at all. Pain and trauma like that can take years to heal, sometimes almost a lifetime. In your head you know that whatever guy you are near isn't "that" guy, but your body and soul react with fear and loathing to protect you from further pain and suffering.  Yet the fact that the issue is discussed in a serious fashion, and that justice is done, is a welcome sight in romance fiction, which tends to be somewhat superficial.  Hence I'd give this ebook a B+, and recommend it to any woman who has served or really any woman who likes multicultural romances that have a real heroine as the protagonist.