Hello to all my fellow readers and writers and people of the book! I know it's been awhile since I've posted new reviews, but I've been struggling with health issues and haven't felt well enough to tackle a new blog post until now. Still, I have a lot to review, along with an obit and a tidbit. So lets get started, shall we?!
I was gutted to hear that Marion Meade had died of Covid 19. She was an amazing biographer and I read "What Fresh Hell.." with glee at all the sarcasm and wit of Dorothy Parker. I also enjoyed her Eleanor of Aquitaine and medieval novels. She lived a full and rich life, and she will be missed.
Obituary
Note: Marion Meade
Marion Meade, the biographer and
feminist, died December 29 at age 88
from complications of Covid.
Meade was best known for her 1987
biography of Dorothy Parker, What
Fresh Hell Is This?, which
helped, along with the 1994 film Mrs. Parker
and Her Vicious Circle, to create a
resurgence of interest in Parker.
Meade edited a new edition of The
Portable Dorothy Parker and a
collection of Parker's poetry as well
as wrote introductions to several
other Parker books.
After earning a Master's at Columbia
Journalism School, Meade began her
career as an investigative journalist,
a helpful background for a
biographer, working on staff and as a
freelancer, contributing pieces to
the New York Times, the Nation, the
Village Voice and McCall's.
In the late 1960s and '70s she became
involved in the feminist movement,
which led to her first book, in 1973,
called Bitching, and her first
biography, in 1976, Free Woman: The
Life and Times of Victoria Woodhull.
She then wrote Eleanor of Aquitaine,
followed by two novels also set in
medieval times, Sybille and Stealing
Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise
and Abelard.
In 2004, Meade published Bobbed Hair
and Bathtub Gin, a group portrait
of four literary 1920s women--Parker,
Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna Ferber and
Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Meade also focused in some of her work
on film, with biographies of
Buster Keaton (1994) and Woody Allen
(2000). Her last major work was
Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of
Nathanael West and Eileen McKinney, a joint biography of Nathanael
West, the writer of The Day of the Locusts and Miss Lonelyhearts, and
his wife, the model for the classic
1938 novel about two young women in
Greenwich Village, My Sister Eileen.
Meade called biography "a
thankless task," noting in 2006 that
"biography has changed in the last
20 years. It was a kind of white
glove type of writing; now it's
'anything goes.' "
Another Obituary Note: Jean Russell Larson
My best friend, Rosemarie M Larson and I met in college and discovered a mutual love of books and children's books in particular. After she became my room mate, Muff Larson shared with me that her own mother (who had raised 8 children as a single parent for the most part) was a children's book author, and after I read (and LOVED) Jack Tar and the Silk Road and the Fish Bride, I realized that Ms Larson was the real deal, a hidden gem of an author whose work would delight and inspire children and adults for generations to come. Ms Larson came to Clarke College and spoke to the English Department/Theater students and those in attendance were in awe of her brilliance as a wordsmith and a feminist. She even encouraged me as a writer, long before I knew that journalism would be my profession. In her later years she became a professor at a local college in Marshalltown and, though she lost two of her children (her eldest, Rick and Muff both died way too soon), she remained a positive force in the lives of her children and grandchildren, as a culture-bearer and storyteller. She was in her 90s, but she will be greatly missed. RIP Jean Russell Larson.
I read the Chronicles of Amber when I was a teenager in the 70s, and I remember loving them so much that I wanted to change my middle name to Amber (my mother laughed when I told her and made it clear that this wasn't going to happen). So I'm looking forward to seeing series on TV, though I sincerely hope that GRRM won't bloody it up and turn it into another gory horror story. But with Stephen Colbert involved, I would like to believe cooler heads with prevail.
TV:
The Chronicles of
Amber
Stephen Colbert will help develop and
produce a series adaptation of
Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAiAwb8I6alvJRkkTw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jPUsD3poMLg-gVdw
via his Spartina banner, alongside Robert Kirkman's Skybound
Entertainment, Deadline reported. This comes seven years after
Kirkman (The Walking Dead) announced he was developing a series based
on the books with Vincent Newman Entertainment.
The Chronicles of Amber features two
series of five books each--the
Corwin Cycle and the Merlin Cycle--with
a number of short stories and
prequels also in the series. The
producing team will begin the search
for a writer to adapt the series.
"George R.R. Martin and I have
similar dreams," Colbert said. "I've
carried the story of Corwin in my head
for over 40 years, and I'm
thrilled to partner with Skybound and
Vincent Newman to bring these
worlds to life. All roads lead to
Amber, and I'm happy to be walking
them."
David Alpert, CEO, Skybound
Entertainment, added: "Adapting one of my
favorite book series of all time is the
fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
Producing it alongside someone like
Stephen Colbert, who is a true-blue
super fan, is a thrill for me, and will
be for anyone who's ever
listened to Stephen talk about fantasy.
We can't wait to share this
amazing story both with the legion of
current fans like ourselves and a
new generation of fans that will
undoubtedly fall for Amber."
"Having Stephen Colbert and his
Spartina team join our cause is both a
privilege and a thrill. Stephen,
Spartina and the good folks at Skybound
are as true of fans of Amber as they
are prolific storytellers. I
couldn't ask for a better dream team of
partners as we bring the Amber
universe to audiences around the
globe," said Newman.
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is the speculative fiction book for February that we're reading for my library book group. It's quite a tome, weighing in at over 600 pages, and I have to say that I felt lost at sea for about 450 of them. This book tells the stories of Anna, Zeno, Omeir, Konstance and Seymour, all troubled people whose lives seem far enough apart in time to not be woven together in any sensible way before the end. However, Doerr finally gets the job done in the last 150-200 pages, though when we finally reach the end, it's depressing and despairing, leading me to wonder if the long journey of this novel was worth the Herculean effort it took to read it. The prose is pedestrian and the plot weaves drunkenly in and out of various timelines, making the reader scratch their head and wonder what all the information about the Greeks and POW camps is for. Here's the blurb:
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times
bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for
adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times Book Review).
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of recent times, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope, and a book.
In the 15th century, an orphan named Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople. She learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds what might be the last copy of a centuries-old book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the army that will lay siege to the city. His path and Anna’s will cross.
In the present day, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno rehearses children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege.
And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father.
Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders whose lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own.
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of recent times, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope, and a book.
In the 15th century, an orphan named Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople. She learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds what might be the last copy of a centuries-old book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the army that will lay siege to the city. His path and Anna’s will cross.
In the present day, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno rehearses children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege.
And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father.
Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders whose lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own.
I disagree with the blurb, I didn't feel the worlds were dramatic or immersive, only bizarre and sad and very forgettable. I fell asleep more than a few times trying to read this novel, mainly because it didn't make narrative sense until the last 150 pages, and even then, what a disappointment of a finale. Everything that matters to the characters, dies. I would give this sad and disjointed tale a C-, and I can't really recommend it as anything but an insomnia-killer.
Night World by L.J. Smith is a YA romance that marries the best (if there is any) of the Twilight saga with Five Feet Apart and The Fault in Our Stars. So it's a story of a handsome vampire "teenager" who rescues a cute girl from a gruesome death by pancreatic cancer by turning her into a vampire. While the premise is interesting and the prose is zesty, the plot gets bogged down by the twin brother, Phil, of the protagonist, Poppy, who can't believe what is happening to her and turns into a toxic male rage machine when trying to deal with her cancer diagnosis and then with James the vampire's 'saving' of her and introducing her to the Night World of vampires and werewolves and witches. This is one of those books that reads like it was written in a paint-by-numbers way by an inexperienced author who felt she had to hit all the tropes of vampire romance fiction. Here's the blurb:
The pain was something Poppy couldn’t ignore. The diagnosis was
death. There was no hope—until James appeared in the darkened hospital
room.
James, her best friend and secret love, the most handsome boy in El Camino High. But this was a James she didn’t know, menacing yet irresistible as he offered Poppy the gift of eternal life.
Only he could open the door to the Night World, and spirit her into its lonely, secret universe.
One dizzying kiss and she can see into his soul. She finds that he has always loved her. They’re soul mates—but can she follow him into death and beyond? It’s a desperate choice, and Poppy’s time is running out
James, her best friend and secret love, the most handsome boy in El Camino High. But this was a James she didn’t know, menacing yet irresistible as he offered Poppy the gift of eternal life.
Only he could open the door to the Night World, and spirit her into its lonely, secret universe.
One dizzying kiss and she can see into his soul. She finds that he has always loved her. They’re soul mates—but can she follow him into death and beyond? It’s a desperate choice, and Poppy’s time is running out
I didn't like that this book was produced with red print on a cream background, though the maroon library cloth cover, embossed in silver, is lovely. While it's the first of 9 books, I wasn't excited enough by the story to want to read any of the other books in the series. Still, I'd give it a B-, and recommend it to die-hard vampire story fans, and those who actually enjoyed (shudder) the vile Twilight series.
Bitter Bite by Jennifer Estep is the 14th book in Estep's addictive Elemental Assassins series. Having read all her other books in the series, I was interested to see how she'd keep the world of Gin and Finn fresh after so long. In this instance, a great deal of Finns past comes to light after a woman claiming to be his mother strolls back into town. Here's the blurb: I loved that Gin didn't let her "spider sense" go in favor of believing that this ice elemental is just in town to reconnect with her son (after abandoning him 20 plus years prior). Never distrust your gut, and Gin's gut is spot on in this tale of greed and narcissist psychopathy. The prose is spiffy, as usual, and the plot flies like a speeding bullet from Finns fancy gun. I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to anyone who has read the previous 13 novels, though I recommend that you purchase the ebook editions, which are much more reasonably priced that the dead tree versions.
The Librarian of Crooked Lane by C.J. Archer is a wonderful fantasy/paranormal romance set in an England that seems very Harry Potter-esque, and therefore delightfully intriguing. Archer's prose is stunning, and the plot moves swiftly and with a great deal of deft imagery. Here's the blurb: I found this novel thrilling, as I'm a big fan of old books, magic and libraries and librarians in general. So if you're a reader who loves reading about bookshops and private libraries sequestered away in some darkened alley that few people know about (and is shrouded in mystery) then this is the book for you. I read it all in one sitting, it was so delightfully mysterious and exciting. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to any and all bibliophiles and magic book lovers.
No comments:
Post a Comment