Howdy there, book friends and nerds! It's the third week of October already, and we're on our way to the holidays, starting with Samhain/Halloween next week. Last year we didn't get any candy or participate due to the COVID 19 quarantine, but this year I have a feeling that a few brave, masked souls might take a chance and venture forth in search of trick or treats. Anyway, here's the latest news and reviews.
Brilliant idea! Two of my passions, books and theater, all in one place!
The Robin Theatre, Lansing, Mich., Adds Bookstore
The Robin Theatre in Lansing, Mich., has added a bookstore called Robin Books , the Lansing City Pulse reported https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz49977922.
The small general-interest store offers a curated selection of new and used titles, from literary fiction and nonfiction to plays and mythology, as well as gifts.
The bookstore will soon start "testing," with indoor shopping hours scheduled for every Saturday in October. Customers can also shop by appointment, and Robin Books is now accepting donations of gently used books.
Owners Dylan Rogers and Jeana-Dee Allen, who founded the Robin Theatre in Lansing's REO Town in 2015, said they were inspired to start a bookstore on a trip to Bogota, Colombia, where they visited a "magical bookstore."
Rogers added that they're reaching out to local authors to plan readings and signings, and working toward establishing consistent hours. "I want to build something that is charming, interesting and valuable to the community."
I read this novel and I'm very curious to see how it's adapted to the big screen.
Movies: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Several cast members have been announced for Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz49977956, a film adaptation of Benjamin Alire Saenz's 2014 YA novel. Deadline reported that Eugenio Derbez, Eva Longoria, Max Pelayo, Reese Gonzales, Veronica Falcon, Isabella Gomez, Luna Blaise and Kevin Alejandro will star in the project. Aitch Alberto wrote the script and will make her directorial debut on the movie.
"At its core, Ari and Dante tells a story of self-discovery and acceptance," Alberto said. "My own journey helped me realize there is nothing more important than standing up and fully embracing who we are and being seen for it. I'm motivated to place a lens on male vulnerability that includes a more empathic and compassionate gaze that helps redefine masculinity specifically for the Latino/a/e/x community. To say this is a dream come true is an understatement."
Truer words were never quoted. I've long maintained that children's lit authors and poets have to be the best writers, because they have to pare down their prose or poetry and make every word count.
Quotation of the Day
'Good Children's Literature Is a Serious Business'
"Good children's literature is a serious business. Not serious as in boring or 'improving,' but serious in attention and ambition, serious about beauty and wonder, about engaging the brain but also the heart, about sadness and difficulty, but also about silliness and joy. Above all, it is serious about the legitimacy of a child's world--which is a world away from being child-ish.
"Good children's literature literally impresses upon a growing brain how the world--or word--is and can be. There is much great children's literature in English, both old and new. But we must ensure not only that it continues to be written but that it is available. We must take care not to devalue the seriousness of writing for children, because by doing so we risk devaluing and narrowing childhood too."--from "The Guardian view on children's books: take them seriously https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz49980553"
I find myself struggling with this dilemma on a daily basis, especially for hardback and paperback books that I pay for, so I feel like I have to give them the benefit of the doubt, even when it's apparent that the book won't live up to the jacket copy or the blurb hype. As Nancy Pearl said, you can take fewer pages to decide if you want to proceed with a book the older you get. Since I'm 60, that means that books only have 40 pages or less to grab my attention and keep me wanting to read. So far this year I've returned 6 or so books as "unreadable" to Amazon, because they were just too dull or too poorly written.
Robert Gray: A Reader's Dilemma: To Resist, Finish, Adjourn or Abandon
"That book has got to set its stall out in 20 pages. I used to be a stand-up. I couldn't walk out on a stage at the Comedy Store and go: 'Stick with me, I'll get funny in about ten minutes.' There has to be something within the first chapters that's got me interested or hooked or engaged or, really, what's the point?"--Author Mark Billingham, speaking recently at the Times and the Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival
Billingham's "20-page rule" comments, which were also shared in the Guardian struck a chord, as such opinions always do when the conversation turns to finishing or bailing out of books in the early chapters. He confessed to giving up on five out of every ten books he starts because "life's too short.... There are so many great books out there. Even more so with genre fiction. We're supposed to tell you a story and if that story isn't grabbing you--it may not be crash bang wallop in the plot, it may be a voice--then for God's sake throw it across the room angrily."
He also contrasted his reading patience with that of his wife, who even if she admits to not enjoying a book will persevere as if it were a "war of attrition."
It's a long-running, unresolvable debate, a literary bloodsport.
So, about those 20 pages. I can be an impatient reader in the early stages of any book, and I bail... a lot. But that's also a survival skill when new books and ARCS, print as well as digital, are flying at me like meteor storms.
I guess I subscribe to librarian, author and action figure Nancy Pearl's "Revised 'Rule of 50 https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz49980629.' " In 2011, she told the Globe & Mail she had originally developed her Rule of 50 on the spur of the moment:: "Give a book 50 pages. When you get to the bottom of Page 50, ask yourself if you're really liking the book. If you are, of course, then great, keep on reading. But if you're not, then put it down and look for another." It's a reader's version of Marie Kondo's "Sparking Joy" theory.
In her 50s and 60s, Pearl decided to update her rule: "I could no longer avoid the realization that, while the reading time remaining in my life was growing shorter, the world of books that I wanted to read was, if anything, growing larger." This was her revision: "When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number (which, of course, gets smaller every year) is the number of pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book. As the saying goes, 'Age has its privileges.' And the ultimate privilege of age, of course, is that when you turn 100, you are authorized (by the Rule of 50) to judge a book by its cover."
Currently I can bail out at 29 pages, but it's still complicated. These are my options:
Resist: I choose not to read almost every book in existence, strictly on a raw numbers basis.Finish: Open book, read to "The End." Optional use of bookmarks (aka "quitter strips") to rest along the way.Adjourn: So many books on my shelves are still bookmarked after years of neglect. I didn't abandon them; I just got... distracted. Abandon: I have (more often than I'd like to admit) simply closed the cover early and moved on. Ceremonially, the key moment is when the bookmark is removed, not moved.
So read any book you want to and bail when you have to. After all, nobody's watching. Except e-book providers. They always know the page where you stopped reading. --Robert Gray
What an amazing human being, to hold no hatred in his heart after the horrors that were inflicted upon him during the Holocaust. May he rest in peace.
Obituary Note: Eddie Jaku
Holocaust survivor and author Eddie Jaku died October 12 at age 101.
Born Abraham Jakubowicz to a Jewish family in Leipzig, Germany, Jaku
emigrated to Australia in 1950, where he lived for the rest of his life.
His memoir, The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an
Auschwitz Survivor, was published in May of this year (in the U.S. by
Harper) and became an international bestseller.
Jaku was expelled from school in 1933 for being Jewish. He earned an
engineering degree in a different city under an alias, which later
spared him from the gas chambers to work as a slave laborer. Most of his
family and friends did not survive the Holocaust. Jaku was sent to his
first concentration camp after Kristallnacht in 1938. He was in
Auschwitz near the end of the war and forced into a death march away
from oncoming Soviet troops. Jaku escaped and spent months in hiding
until discovered by Allied troops.
Jaku was a longtime volunteer at the Sydney Jewish Museum, where he
shared his story and prisoner number tattoo with visitors. In a 2019
speech, he said "I do not hate anyone. Hate is a disease which may
destroy your enemy, but will also destroy you."
Still excited to watch this series when it debuts! I loved reading the Sandman graphic novels years ago, and I imagine watching the characters come to life will be thrilling.
TV: The Sandman
Gwendoline Christie "looks devilish in the first look at her character" in the upcoming Netflix series The Sandman https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50008333, based on the comic book series by Neil Gaiman, Deadline reported. During last Saturday's virtual DC FanDome event, "viewers got a glimpse at the Game of Thrones alum as the series' Lucifer, the ruler of Hell. The first look images see Christie donning dark attire and a pair of ominous-looking wings."
Christie will star in the project with Tom Sturridge as Dream/Morpheus and a cast that includes Boyd Holbrook, Charles Dance, David Thewlis, Jenna Coleman, Stephen Fry, Patton Oswalt, Joely Richardson, Asim Chaudhry, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Kirby Howell-Baptiste. Allan Heinberg is the show runner and an executive producer. Also on the project as exec producers and co-writers with Heinberg are David S. Goyer and Gaiman. The series is produced by Warner Bros. Television
The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman is the 4th and final book in her Practical Magic series, which I've read and adored over the years, as I have with many other Hoffman novels. Alice Hoffman's prose is nearly perfect, clean and yet lush and evocative and emotional. She really makes you feel as if you could run into one of the Owens sisters on a street in Boston, or at a shop in England. And her magic also seems real, steeped in history and midwifery and herbal lore that it is. Here's the blurb: Master storyteller Alice Hoffman brings us the conclusion of the
Practical Magic series in a spellbinding and enchanting final Owens
novel brimming with lyric beauty and vivid characters.
The
Owens family has been cursed in matters of love for over three-hundred
years but all of that is about to change. The novel begins in a library,
the best place for a story to be conjured, when beloved aunt Jet Owens
hears the deathwatch beetle and knows she has only seven days to live.
Jet is not the only one in danger—the curse is already at work.
A
frantic attempt to save a young man’s life spurs three generations of
the Owens women, and one long-lost brother, to use their unusual gifts
to break the curse as they travel from Paris to London to the English
countryside where their ancestor Maria Owens first practiced the Unnamed
Art. The younger generation discovers secrets that have been hidden
from them in matters of both magic and love by Sally, their fiercely
protective mother. As Kylie Owens uncovers the truth about who she is
and what her own dark powers are, her aunt Franny comes to understand
that she is ready to sacrifice everything for her family, and Sally
Owens realizes that she is willing to give up everything for love.
The Book of Magic is a breathtaking conclusion that celebrates mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers, and anyone who has ever been in love.
The plot was so smooth and lovely, and the characters so fascinating, I cried when I finished the book, because I didn't want to say goodbye to these women, generations of whom have become my friends on the page. I truly believe that love is magic, and magic is love, in many senses, and that what you put out into the world comes back to you. Anyway, I can't praise this book enough, and I'm giving it an A, and recommending this novel to anyone who has read any of the Practical Magic series, or who has even seen the movie. Though it's an expensive hardback, it's worth every penny.
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood is a contemporary romance that reads like a YA romance with more science and Big Bang Theory-style nerds thrown in. the prose is fun and moves along the sleek plot easily. Unfortunately, it sometimes reads like a BBT script, in its stereotypical view of science nerds and female scientists, who are, I am certain, not all pretty petite extremely shy dunderheads. Here's the blurb: When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible
force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated
theories on love into chaos.
As a third-year Ph.D.
candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic
relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into
this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way
to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy
Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting
biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.
That
man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and
well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's
reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake
boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting
Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his
unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs.
Suddenly
their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And
Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis
on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
My problem with this book was that anyone who is a third year doctoral candidate would certainly be more mature than Olive, who acts like a timid teenager with raging hormones. I think it's sexist to portray a woman involved in the sciences as being so silly and shy that she can't even string a sentence together when confronted with a man or a group of people. Having women act like little girls, shy and tongue-tied is misogynistic and inaccurate. Women in STEM professions have to be stronger to hurdle the minefield of sexist men and their old boys network and be successful. Also, Carlsen was not only an asshole, he was also immature and patronizing toward Olive and all the other females he encountered. Though it's lighthearted and has the requisite HEA, I still found myself being very disappointed in the cliches and stereotypes found in every chapter of this book. So I'd give it a B-, and recommend it to those who want a frothy romance that sets women in STEM back a decade or so.
Magic Dark and Strange by Kelly Powell was an ebook that I got for under a dollar on Amazon for my Kindle. I wasn't expecting much from it, to be honest, because often ebook deals are for self published authors whose work is, at best, subpar. I was, therefore, surprised by how much I adored this book, which had fantastic prose, great characters and a substantial plot. Here's the blurb: The Bone Witch meets Sherlock Holmes in this thrilling
historical fantasy about a girl with the ability to raise the dead who
must delve into her city’s dangerous magical underworld to stop a series
of murders.
Catherine Daly has an unusual talent. By day she
works for a printer. But by night, she awakens the dead for a few
precious moments with loved ones seeking a final goodbye. But this magic
comes with a price: for every hour that a ghost is brought back,
Catherine loses an hour from her own life.
When Catherine is
given the unusual task of collecting a timepiece from an old grave, she
is sure that the mysterious item must contain some kind of enchantment.
So she enlists Guy Nolan, the watchmaker’s son, to help her dig it up.
But instead of a timepiece, they find a surprise: the body of a teenage
boy. And as they watch, he comes back to life—not as the pale imitation
that Catherine can conjure, but as a living, breathing boy. A boy with
no memory of his past.
This magic is more powerful than any
Catherine has ever encountered, and revealing it brings dangerous
enemies. Catherine and Guy must race to unravel the connection between
the missing timepiece and the undead boy. For this mysterious magic
could mean the difference between life and death—for all of them.
Catherine was a bright and lively character in an otherwise somewhat gloomy milleau, where young people with talent are practically enslaved by business/factory owners. It's a bit steampunk and a bit Oliver Twist, but Powell manages to transport the reader to the grimy streets and misty graveyards with such deftness that you can almost smell the soot in the air and the grave dust in the cemetery. The mystery was well thought out, and added chills and thrills to the plot. I'd give this book an A-, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical mysteries lead by strong female protagonists.
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith is a mystery thriller written by JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame, so as to be differentiated from her YA fantasies. I was 100 pages into the novel before I remembered that salient fact, otherwise I would never have downloaded it to my Kindle. JK Rowling has shown herself to be a TERF and a bigot, and as such I don't want to support her with my book dollars. However, I was able to get a good deal on this ebook, so I wasn't out too much money in the end (what a relief!). Still, while Rowling definitely knows how to tell a story and create memorable characters (I've been enjoying the Cinnemax streaming version of the Cormoran Strike novels for a few years now), her plot in this novel plodded on and on, until I thought I'd never reach the end. This was one of those books that could have used a hardcore editor who isn't afraid to slice away all the redundancies and puffy paragraphs out of a novel, trusty red pencil at the ready. The story could easily have been told in 300 pages, rather than 945 (almost a thousand!) pages. Few authors can keep momentum going in their books for that long. Here's the blurb: In the epic fifth installment in this “compulsively readable” series, Galbraith’s “irresistible hero and heroine” take on the decades-old cold case of a missing doctor, one which may be their grisliest yet.
Private
Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is
approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot
Bamborough—who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974.
Strike
has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old.
But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on;
adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency,
Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also
juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as
battling her own feelings about Strike.
As Strike and Robin
investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly
complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial
killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even
cases decades old can prove to be deadly.
Although I love Robin and Strike as characters, the whole "will they, won't they" romantic subplot has gotten more than a bit stale in this 5th installment of the series. I mean, it's obvious that they've fallen for one another, and while it's probably not a good idea to date your boss, I think Robin and Strike could make a go of it, regardless, because they are friends first, and they know each other so well, they can navigate the pitfalls of dating much better than most people. The more lurid and gross aspects of the case they're trying to solve seemed excessive, since it's gone over and over while either Robin or Strike sums up the case in nearly every chapter. That kind of redundancy is boring as heck, and I really would have preferred that Rowling saved it for the end of the book. There's also a lot of death, funerals, sick and crazy people and general misery in this novel that will make you depressed if you aren't already, and it will also make you want to steer clear of London and Cornwall for the rest of your life. Anyway, after slogging through this way-too-long novel, I'd give it a C+ and only recommend it to die hard Rowling/Galbraith fans, or those who, like myself, love Tom Burke's portrayal of Cormoran Strike on the streaming series.
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