Children of Blood and Bone Movie, Little Women Trailer, Quote of the Day, The Lady in the Coppergate Tower by Nancy Campbell Allen, Dragonfly by Leila Meacham, The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind by Jackson Ford, and The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal

It has been a rough week and a half, due to a Crohn's flare and problems with my insurance coverage, among other things. Crohn's disease just takes the wind from my sails, and that is after I've taken pain medications and am out of pain. So the bright side is that I get a lot of reading done when I'm sick, but then I don't have the energy for writing reviews. But, today I decided I wouldn't let the day end without giving it a shot. So here are the latest tidbits and 4 book reviews. 

I loved this book, so I am thrilled that Disney is adapting it into a movie. I hope it will be as popular as the Black Panther movie was (for all the right reasons, BTW.)

Movies: Children of Blood and Bone

Disney "is giving a full embrace" to Children of Blood and Bone http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41510619 the film based on Tomi Adeyemi's bestselling novel that originated as a Fox 2000 property, Deadline reported. Kay Oyegun (This Is Us) is making a deal to write a new script adaptation with Rick Famuyiwa, who will direct.

The project "caught the fancy of Lucasfilm and ... its chief Kathy Kennedy is in the process of making this the first feature property to be produced by Lucasfilm since the Disney acquisition that isn't Star Wars or Indiana Jones," Deadline wrote.

This is another movie adaptation that I'm looking forward to, because it is based on a book that I've loved since childhood.

Movies: Little WomenTrailer

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41563300>A trailer has been released for Greta Gerwig's (Lady Bird) highly anticipated adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41563301, which hits theaters on Christmas Day, Entertainment Weekly reported.

"We wanted [the trailer] to feel like the movie feels, which is both classical and fresh," Gerwig said. "We wanted it to feel light on its feet. And even though it does take place in the 19th century, we in no way wanted it to feel like it was something that was past. We wanted it to feel like it was present right now."

EW added: "Good luck not being knocked over by the very present emotion of seeing Meg (Emma Watson), Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and Amy (Florence Pugh) brought to vivid life in the joyous, colorful footage, with glimpses of gentle Marmee (Laura Dern), stern Aunt March (Meryl Streep), and the wonderful, almost-irresistible Laurie (Timothée Chalamet).""It's like their hearts are as big as the landscape," Gerwig said.

This is an excellent quote, and very true! Bookstores always make me feel at home.

Quotation of the Day

'This Is a Place for You to Feel at Home'

"I've been hearing for the past ten years that print is dead, that books are dying, and that independent bookstores are simply a thing of the past. Funny, things look pretty great from our perspective! In all seriousness, I'd like to chat a little about the value I see in local bookstores, not just my own, but those all over the country and the world. It's true, it may be easier to order a book online, but that doesn't make this space any less loved, used, or needed. I do not hate the way books are sold now or the fact that some people just order them with a click of a button on their phone. What I care about, what I truly deeply care about, is that books are being loved, read, and discovered.

People are reading more now than ever before, here you are reading this! I believe we are having a reading revival and if it's from a tablet, a phone, a book you bought online, or a book you discovered in an independent bookstore, I celebrate the reading that is happening--no matter the form. So I welcome you to come on in, find a gift for your friend, a new set of stationery for your cousin, a new book for your dad, and a new journal for yourself. I invite you to join our book club, meet a visiting author, purchase an autographed copy, or simply browse the racks. This is a place for you to feel at home, and that's something we hope to have in common with books!"

--Bridgeside Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41566870, Waterbury, Vt.

The Lady in the Coppergate Tower by Nancy Campbell Allen is a lovely steampunk fantasy/romance that adds elements of famous fairy tales, among them Rapunzel, to create a truly engaging story. This book was recommended to me by the people on the Gail Carriger author page on Facebook. The prose was precise and elegant, while the plot moved swiftly along, like an automaton on wheels! I loved the connections to Dracula and the fearlessness of the protagonist Hazel and her employer (and paramour) Dr Sam. Here's the blurb:

Hazel Hughes has spent her life believing she is a Medium someone who can talk to ghosts. But as of yet, that skill has remained frustratingly elusive. She is also suffering from a reoccurring childhood dream of someone who looks almost exactly like Hazel, but this dream version of herself is slowly going mad.
Sam MacInnes is a talented surgeon who runs in the highest social circles thanks to his family s position and history. When Sam hires Hazel to assist him with his medical practice, he is immediately drawn to her intelligence, wit, and beauty. Their potential relationship is derailed one evening when a mysterious count arrives in London and reveals to Hazel the truth about her past: she was abducted at birth and her twin sister has fallen dangerously ill.
Hazel agrees to travel to Romania with Count Petrescu in order to save her sister, and Sam insists on accompanying her. The count has secrets, though, and the journey grows more sinister with every mile that draws Hazel closer to her homeland. Even as her feelings for Sam become deeper and more complicated, she fears she might not survive the quest to save her sister with her heart intact, not to mention her life. She must learn to draw on gifts she doesn t know she has if they are going to ever return home again.
Hazel and Sam must fight their way past dark magic, clockwork beasts, and their own insecurities as they try to reach her sister in the impenetrable Coppergate Tower before time runs out.

I was swiftly engaged with this book and couldn't stop reading, though I knew I was losing sleep over it. A real page turner like this deserves an A, and I'd highly recommend it to fantasy romance readers and Gail Carriger fans.

Dragonfly by Leila Meacham is a whopper of a novel. Though I realize that my large print edition adds at least 300 pages due to font size, I still imagine the regular type editions clock in at a hefty 500 pages or so. This book was 850 pages and I had trouble lifting it with my arthritic wrist. Still, after the first 50 pages, the book really begins to move, and once the plot started moving it was full steam ahead for this enchanting WWII story. The prose was straightforward, if a bit simplistic, and the plot, as I said, was a juggernaut. The 5 main characters were likable and represented a generation of Americans who proved to be the kind of people we all want people around the world to think Americans are like. Here's the blurb: 

From the New York Times bestselling author of Roses comes a gripping new novel about five young spies embedded among the highest Nazi ranks in occupied Paris

At the height of World War II, a handful of idealistic young Americans receive a mysterious letter from the government, asking them if they are willing to fight for their country. The men and women from very different backgrounds-a Texan athlete with German roots, an upper-crust son of a French mother and a wealthy businessman, a dirt-poor Midwestern fly fisherman, an orphaned fashion designer, and a ravishingly beautiful female fencer-all answer the call of duty, but each for a secret reason of her or his own. They bond immediately, in a group code-named Dragonfly.
Thus begins a dramatic cat-and-mouse game, as the group seeks to stay under the radar until a fatal misstep leads to the capture and the firing-squad execution of one of their team. But...is everything as it seems, or is this one more elaborate act of spycraft? 

Though I found it hard to believe that there were two high ranking German SS officers who were against Hitler and wanted to help the Allies win the war, (and were willing to die for their cause and for allied spies that they knew of but didn't turn in), I still enjoyed the intricacy of the background of Nazi occupied France, of how people survived, of the way that cruelty and murder became commonplace, and love and sacrifice were also the order of the day for people. The mural and the joy that it brings in a dark time was also touching. This is one of those books that would make a great Netflix series. At any rate, I'd give it an A, and recommend it to anyone who wants some insight into WWII spycraft and the greatest generation.

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind by Jackson Ford sounded like a fun contemporary sf/fantasy novel, and so it was. The prose was punchy and tough, and the plot had plenty of twists and turns. That said, there was a real "the bad parts of real life in LA" kind of vibe in the book, and if you find bad language/swearing and gruesome murder/murderers objectionable, this is not the book for you. Still Teagan is a hoot, a sassy and pugnacious telekenetic young woman who is hard on the outside but has a marshmallow heart. Here's the blurb: Full of imagination, wit, and random sh*t flying through the air, this insane adventure from an irreverent new voice will blow your tiny mind.
For Teagan Frost, sh*t just got real.
Teagan Frost is having a hard time keeping it together. Sure, she's got telekinetic powers -- a skill that the government is all too happy to make use of, sending her on secret break-in missions that no ordinary human could carry out. But all she really wants to do is kick back, have a beer, and pretend she's normal for once.
But then a body turns up at the site of her last job -- murdered in a way that only someone like Teagan could have pulled off. She's got 24 hours to clear her name - and it's not just her life at stake. If she can't unravel the conspiracy in time, her hometown of Los Angeles will be in the crosshairs of an underground battle that's on the brink of exploding. 

I loved that Teagan was friends with the homeless community, and that their king, who knows all, is named Africa. I also loved that the head of their small CIA-like cell is a handicapped woman in a wheelchair who kicks ass, even when she's forced out of her chair. What I didn't love where that the guys in the group were asshats. And I didn't love that the serial killer was so easily manipulated, and the person pulling his strings somehow justified what he was doing as being for the common good. Blech. Still, I enjoyed this story and it kept me entertained until the last page. I'd give it a B,and recommend it to anyone who likes "realistic" modern sf/f with lots of gore and swearing.

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal was one of those books that I was going to purchase, because it sounded, from the blurbs, like it was right up my alley, so I wasn't sure I wanted to wait for it to get to me via the hold system at the KCL. Now that I read it I am glad that I decided to wait for the library copy instead of buying it. This was a very disappointing novel about three sisters, Rajni, Jezmeen and Shirina who are forced to go on a trip to India together to fulfill their bossy mother's last wish after she dies. These young women were born in England, and all are somewhat spoiled and set into their roles within the family dynamic in such a way that they don't seem to be able to get out from under everyone's expectations. Rajni is a hard-ass and rigid in her role as the sister who tells everyone else what to do and how to behave, Jezmeen is a shallow idiot who only seeks fame, but after a meltdown that includes her kicking a rare species of fish to death (which she really doesn't seem to regret, she's just pissed off that she was caught on camera doing it) she's become infamous and is losing possible acting jobs, and Shirina is a lemming and a weak pushover who allows her evil MIL and her wimpy and cruel husband to try and force her into aborting her pregnancy because they want her to have a boy first (because boys are more important than girls in India, apparently, which is backward and disgusting). Here's the blurb:

The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters—Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirina—were never close and barely got along growing up, and now as adults, have grown even further apart. Rajni, a school principal is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a thirty-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking "good" sister married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life.
On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites. After a trip to India with her mother long ago, Rajni vowed never to return. But she’s always been a dutiful daughter, and cannot, even now, refuse her mother’s request. Jezmeen has just been publicly fired from her television job, so the trip to India is a welcome break to help her pick up the pieces of her broken career. Shirina’s in-laws are pushing her to make a pivotal decision about her married life; time away will help her decide whether to meekly obey, or to bravely stand up for herself for the first time.
Arriving in India, these sisters will make unexpected discoveries about themselves, their mother, and their lives—and learn the real story behind the trip Rajni took with their Mother long ago—a momentous journey that resulted in Mum never being able to return to India again.
The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is a female take on the Indian travel narrative. "I was curious about how different the trip would be if it were undertaken by women, who are vulnerable to different dangers in a male-dominated society," Balli Kaur Jaswal writes. "I also wanted to explore the tensions between tradition and modernity in immigrant communities, and particularly how those tensions play out among women like these sisters, who are the first generation to be raised outside of India."
Powerful, emotionally evocative, and wonderfully atmospheric, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is a charming and thoughtful story that illuminates the bonds of family, sisterhood, and heritage that tether us despite our differences. Funny and heartbreaking, it is a reminder of the truly important things we must treasure in our lives.

I didn't find this book funny or heartbreaking, it just made me angry that none of these women could really be mature enough to get it together and move forward with their lives. They were too mired in tradition or fear. The prose was workmanlike and sometimes dull, while the plot was easily unraveled and stalled in spots. After reading how women are treated in India, I never want to step foot in such a horribly sexist country. So I'd give the book a C, and only recommend it to women who find Indian travel narratives told from a woman's POV fascinating. Take my advice, though, get the book from the library if you are unsure whether or not you will enjoy it. It will save you money better spent on much better books.