I can hardly believe that we're halfway through November, and on our way to Thanksgiving and my son's 25th birthday! Wonderful! My husband has been in the hospital these past 8 days and is coming home tomorrow, so today I've been trying to get everything in order for his arrival with a broken hip and mental confusion (never a good combo). Meanwhile, I've been reading some of the great books my son got me at HPB and at Elliott Bay Book Company on Capitol Hill in Seattle. We spent two hours browsing and buying and chatting with the delightful staff, and it was an uplifting and joyful experience that had me fizzing for a couple of days afterwards. There's also been a lot going on in the book world, so here are a bunch of tidbits and only three book reviews...sorry! More to follow.
I've always felt that there are times when life is so surreal, that it seems like we're on the holodeck on the USS Enterprise living out a fantasy.
Is This the Real Life?
Is This Just Fantasy?
In
case you weren’t stressed out enough by ::waves arms at the whole
world::, Gizmodo
asked experts in computer science, philosophy, social psychology, and
neuroscience if we could be in a computer simulation,
and the answers may surprise you. “Using evidence-based reasoning,
we can’t conclusively determine whether we are living in a
simulation or not. A sufficiently sophisticated simulation can be
totally indistinguishable from reality, and any bugs could always be
deleted and then the simulation restarted from before their
emergence.”
I have always wanted to visit Kennewick, and this gives me another reason to do so someday soon.
Storytime Bookshop and
Events Opens in Kennewick, Wash.
Storytime Bookshop and Events
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVTcwr8I6a4yJB5zGQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mTDsP3poMLg-gVdw,
a dedicated children's bookshop, has officially opened at 309 W.
Kennewick Ave. in downtown Kennewick, Wash., offering a selection of
primarily used books for children and families, along with some adult
fiction.
"At Storytime Bookshop and Events,
we take our play seriously. Our
mission is to create a space where
children and families can come
together to explore the wonders of
literature and imagination. We are
thrilled to bring this vision to life
in Downtown Kennewick," said CEO
Lorelei Kennedy.
In addition to books, Storytime
Bookshop and Events said it is
"committed to fostering a love for
reading and learning through a
variety of engaging activities. The
bookshop hosts interactive story
times, free and paid programming, and
author signings, providing a
dynamic environment for both education
and entertainment."
The business describes itself as a
community hub where literacy and
creativity are celebrated, emphasizing
"the importance of play and
performance, offering a safe space for
children and families to explore
and discover the joys of reading."
Storytime Bookshop also provides
off-site workshops, residencies, and
professional development.
This sounds like a wonderful retelling and exploration of the Odyssey, with some exceptionally talented actors. I plan on seeing this when it premiers.
Movies: The Return
A trailer
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVTcwr8I6a4yJB5xTA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mTDsP3poMLg-gVdw
has been released for The Return,inspired by Homer's The Odyssey. The
film is co-written, directed, and produced by Uberto Pasolini, "who
previously moved viewers to tears this year with Nowhere Special,"
IndieWire reported. The Return premieres in
theaters December 6.
Ralph Fiennes stars as Odysseus and
Juliette Binoche as Penelope,
reuniting the actors almost 30 years
after they co-starred in The
English Patient. The cast also includes
Charlie Plummer, Marwan Kenzari,
Claudio Santamaria, and Angela Molina.
The official logline: "After 20
years away, Odysseus (Fiennes) washes up
on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and
unrecognizable. The King has
returned from the Trojan War, but much
has changed in his kingdom. His
beloved wife Penelope (Binoche) is a
prisoner in her own home, hounded
by suitors vying to be king. Their son
Telemachus faces death at the
hands of these suitors, who see him as
merely an obstacle to their
pursuit of the kingdom. Odysseus has
also changed--scarred by his
experience of the Trojan war, he is no
longer the mighty warrior from
years past--but he must rediscover his
strength in order to win back all
he has lost."
This book sounds utterly wonderful, and I hope to be able to secure a copy at my local library.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Wins Booker Prize
British author Samantha Harvey won the
2024 Booker Prize for
her novel Orbital
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVTekusI6a4ycUgkHw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mTDJOjpoMLg-gVdw,
becoming the first woman to win the award since 2019, when Margaret
Atwood and Bernadine Evaristo were joint winners. Harvey's novel was
published in the U.S. in hardcover by Atlantic Monthly Press in 2023 and was just
released in a paperback edition by
Vintage.
Orbital is the first Booker
Prize-winning book set in space. At 136
pages, it is the second-shortest book
to win the prize and covers the
briefest time frame of any book on the
shortlist, taking place over just
24 hours
Harvey said of writing her novel: "I
thought of it as space pastoral--a
kind of nature writing about the beauty
of space."
Chair of the judges Edmund de Waal
commented: "In an unforgettable year
for fiction, a book about a wounded
world. Sometimes you encounter a
book and cannot work out how this
miraculous event has happened. As
judges we were determined to find a
book that moved us, a book that had
capaciousness and resonance, that we
are compelled to share. We wanted
everything.
"Orbital is our book. Samantha
Harvey has written a novel propelled by
the beauty of sixteen sunrises and
sixteen sunsets. Everyone and no one
is the subject, as six astronauts in
the International Space Station
circle the Earth observing the passages
of weather across the fragility
of borders and time zones. With her
language of lyricism and acuity
Harvey makes our world strange and new
for us.... Our unanimity about
Orbital recognizes its beauty and
ambition. It reflects Harvey's
extraordinary intensity of attention to
the precious and precarious
world we share."
It's no secret that JS is my favorite classic lit author, and these words, written during WW2 are poignant even now, when our country is so divided and about to be lead by a deranged despot who is racist/sexist/homophobic and anti-science, pro-book-banning. His reign, which starts in January, threatens our entire democracy.
So these words have special meaning right now.
John
Steinbeck writes on January 1, 1941:
Speaking
of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of
being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind
of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our
neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty… So we go into
this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing,
can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand
years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years
that preceded.
But
Steinbeck, who devoted his life to defending
the disenfranchised
and celebrating
the highest potentiality of the human spirit,
refuses to succumb to what Rebecca Solnit has so aptly termed the
“despair,
defeatism, cynicism, amnesia and assumptions”
to which we reflexively resort in maladaptive self-defense against
overwhelming evil. Instead, fifteen centuries after Plato’s
brilliant charioteer
metaphor for good and evil,
Steinbeck quickly adds a perceptive note on the indelible duality of
human nature and the cyclical character of the civilizational
continuity we call history:
“Not
that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will
rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that
the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die.
I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious
that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that
two forces are necessary in man before he is man. I asked [the
influential microbiologist] Paul de Kruif once if he would like to
cure all disease and he said yes. Then I suggested that the man he
loved and wanted to cure was a product of all his filth and disease
and meanness, his hunger and cruelty. Cure those and you would have
not man but an entirely new species you wouldn’t recognize and
probably wouldn’t like.”
I'm hoping that they don't change my favorite mecca bookstore in Oregon so much that I don't recognize it when I visit next time!
Reorganization,
Renovations Underway at Powell's
A reorganization and renovations are
underway at Powell's flagship location in Portland, Ore., Willamette
Week reported
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVeIlekI6a4ycEsiHw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mQWpShpoMLg-gVdw.
The reorganization includes moving the
science fiction, fantasy, and
romance genres from the relatively
small Gold Room on the store's first
floor to the larger Purple Room on the
second floor. Those genres are
among Powell's biggest sellers, and the
move will allow the bookstore to
expand them.
At the same time, what was once
Powell's Orange Room will be renamed the
Home and Garden Room, and will include
architecture and decor books as
well as plants from local nurseries.
Books related to film and TV, which
previously resided in the Orange Room,
will move to the Pearl Room.
The Powell's team is also taking the
opportunity to freshen up some
paint jobs, move displays, and do other
renovation work. The goal,
Powell's marketing director Jeremy
Solly told Willamette Week, is to
"have it be a place people feel
relaxed and can come in and take the
time." He noted too that it is the
first remodel that Powell's has done
in a "long, long time."
Work has been ongoing for about a
month, and Powell's hopes to have it
all complete by the end of November.
This should be an exciting series to look forward to in the spring. The cast sounds particularly amazing.
TV: Miss Austen
PBS Masterpiece has announced that the
four-part period drama Miss
Austen
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVeIlekI6a4ycEsgHQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mQWpShpoMLg-gVdw,
based on the 2020 novel by Gill Hornsby, will premiere May 4, 2025.
The series is adapted by award-winning writer Andrea Gibb (Elizabeth
Is Missing, Mayflies).
Starring Keeley Hawes (Bodyguard, The
Durrells in Corfu), the project's
cast includes Rose Leslie (Game of
Thrones), Synnove Karlsen
(Last Night in Soho), Patsy Ferran
(Living), Max Irons (The Wife),
Alfred Enoch (How to Get Away with
Murder), Calam Lynch (Bridgerton),
and Phyllis Logan (Downton Abbey).
Miss Austen "takes one of the most
prominent literary mysteries in
history--Cassandra Austen notoriously
burning her famous sister Jane's
letters--and reimagines it as a
fascinating, witty and heart-breaking
story of sisterly love, while creating
in Cassandra a character as
captivating as any Austen heroine,"
PBS Masterpiece noted.
A Fire in the Sky by Sophie Jordan is an epic romantasy with dragons book that I could not put down. This page-turner had strong elements of McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series without seeming like a rip off or parody of same (I'm looking at you, Fourth Wing!). Here's the blurb:
New York Times bestselling
author Sophie Jordan returns to the high-stakes, sweeping world of
dragons, romance, and drama first evoked in her bestselling young adult Firelight series, in a brand-new epic adult romantasy series.
Dragons are extinct. Witches are outcast. Magic is dying.
But human lust for power is immortal.
Dragon
fire no longer blisters the skies over Penterra, but inside the lavish
palace, life is still perilous…especially for Tamsyn. Raised in the
glittering court alongside the princesses, it's her duty to be punished
for their misdeeds. Treated as part of the royal family but also as the
lowliest servant, Tamsyn fits nowhere. Her only friend is Stig, Captain
of the Guard...though sometimes she thinks he wants more than
friendship.
When Fell, the Beast of the Borderlands,
descends on her home, Tamsyn’s world becomes even more dangerous. To
save the pampered princesses from a fate worse than death, she is
commanded to don a veil and marry the brutal warrior. She agrees to the
deception even though it means leaving Stig, and the only life she’s
ever known, behind.
The wedding night begins with
unexpected passion—and ends in near violence when her trickery is
exposed. Rather than start a war, Fell accepts Tamsyn as his bride...but
can he accept the dark secrets she harbors—secrets buried so deep even
she doesn’t know they exist? For Tamsyn is more than a royal whipping
girl, more than the false wife of a man who now sees her as his enemy.
And when those secrets emerge, they will ignite a flame bright enough to
burn the entire kingdom to the bone.
Magic is not dead...it is only sleeping. And it will take one ordinary girl with an extraordinary destiny to awaken it.
I loved that Tamsyn, the protagonist, was defiant and always trying to help others and spare them pain, and I liked the male protagonist, Stig's realization that he was and is at heart a soldier, but that he could still be tender and loving with a woman, and that both of these characters had to deal with the ultra rich asshats who were only interested in using people to their advantage, much like billionaires today. The fact that both became magic creatures only added to the romance, and by the end I was breathless. I was fortunate enough to get the pretty edition of this book that has royal blue end papers, which made the beautiful cover really stand out. I'd give this deluxe addition an A, and recommend it to anyone who likes romance and magic and dragons.The Other Side of the Sky by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner is a YA romantasy that was overwritten and therefore overly long, with a very slow beginning that had lots of set up for world building. The whole book really wound up and shot out at velocity once it hit page 100, however, and from then on the plot was a runaway freight train. Here's the blurb: Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner prove they
are two living goddesses of writing, creating two compelling worlds with
high stakes and gripping emotions." —Sarah Rees Brennan, New York Times
bestselling author of the Demon's Lexicon trilogy and the Lynburn
Legacy series
New York Times bestselling author duo Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner have crafted a gripping tale of magic and logic, fate and choice, and a deadly love. Perfect for fans of Laini Taylor and Brandon Sanderson.
Prince North’s home is in the sky, in a gleaming city held aloft by intricate engines, powered by technology. Nimh is the living goddess of her people on the Surface, responsible for providing answers, direction—hope.
North’s and Nimh’s lives are entwined—though their hearts can never be. Linked by a terrifying prophecy and caught between duty and fate, they must choose between saving their people or succumbing to the bond that is forbidden between them.
North and Nimh are from two different sides of the world. North is from the scientifically advanced cloud dwellers (who have been told that there's little life on the unsustainable planet below) and Nimh is from the superstitious magic users who eek out a living on the surface of the planet, which is dying due to a climate that has been damaged beyond repair (we're never told by what...nuclear war? Advanced climate change? Its explained away by both sides as being "from the ancestors" who didn't seem to leave any information behind on how to fix both worlds). Nimh inherited the wisdom of what her society considers as Godhood, but she never gained the magical abilities of her predecessors, so she only has ritual to back her up as she makes her way to a library that holds the original book of prophecy for her people. Because Nimh is considered a Goddess, she isn't allowed to be touched by anyone, and therefore spends a lot of the book yearning to touch North, whom she falls for in a big way, just as he does her. While this makes for a fascinating premise, the prose plods more than a few times, and the cliffhanger ending was all wrong, and disappointing. Therefore I'd give this long novel a B- and recommend it only to those Brandon Sanderson readers who don't mind wading through a lot of exposition.The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells by Rachel Greenlaw is a contemporary magical fantasy with a romantic thread that holds the story together, and some very serious themes that are unexpected. Here's the blurb: This is a story of romance, broken
friendship, and staying true to yourself under the weight of family
obligations. This sweet tale with light magic will appeal to readers of
Sarah Addison Allen and fans of the movie (and book) Practical Magic.” —Booklist
There is an old tale
woven through the mountain town of Woodsmoke about a stranger who
appears as the first snow falls in winter, who will disappear without a
trace as the frost thaws in spring, leaving a broken heart behind.
Carrie Morgan ran from Woodsmoke ten years ago, and the decision has haunted her ever since. Spending a decade painting and drifting around Europe, she tries to forget her family’s legacy and the friends she left behind. But the Morgan women have always been able to harness the power of the mountains surrounding the town, and their spells—and curses—are sewn into the soil. The mountains, they say, never forget.
Sure enough, when Carrie’s grandmother dies and leaves behind her dilapidated cottage, she returns to renovate—certain she will only be there for one winter. She meets Matthieu as the temperature dips, a newcomer who offers to help refurbish the cottage. Before long, and despite warnings from her great-aunt Cora of the old stories, Carrie finds herself falling for the charming stranger. But when the frost thaws in spring, Matthieu goes missing.
Carrie is convinced he’s real, and he’s in danger. As she fights her way across the mountains to find him, she must confront all the reasons why she left Woodsmoke and decide whether the place she’s spent the last decade running from is the home she’s been searching for.
I was surprised by the serious tone to this novel, and the clear, hard prose that keeps the smooth and mysterious plot moving at lightening speed. Greenlaw keeps readers guessing as to whether Carrie has fallen in love with a spirit of the mountains or a real man. Her strange, guilt ridden and mentally unbalanced (I would call her crazy but that is not allowed nowadays) grandmother Cora and her grandfather make things twice as difficult for Carrie, as does her ex-best-friend Jess and her former beau, who married Jess after Carrie left Woodsmoke behind. There's lots of discussions of the mental and physical toll that guilt takes on people young and old, and it was no surprise to me that the older people died in the end. Though its been compared to the delightful works of Sarah Addison Allen and Alice Hoffman, I didn't get anywhere near the same joyous and freeing vibes out of this book as I do out of theirs. This book had just too many heavy and painful emotions to have any joy or fun in it. So I'd give it a C+ and only recommend it to those who like darker, serious novels with strange romantic through-lines.
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