Hiya, book friends! Sorry this post has taken me so long, but I've been dealing with a lot of health issues, my own and my husband's. It hasn't left enough time to do my usual reading and the stress of dealing with everything has left me exhausted and unable to focus on the things I'd like to focus on. But, with spring finally arriving and summer soon to follow, it's time to try and shake off the problems of yesterday and work towards a productive tomorrow. Here's some tidbits/obits and 3 reviews for you all. Enjoy.
I remember (barely) reading Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines back when I was about 13 years old, and I recall being both thrilled and intimidated by the feminist thought represented in the story arcs. I had no idea Charnas was close to my mother's age, and I'm sorry that she's passed. She was a talented woman. RIP.
Obituary Note: Suzy McKee Charnas
Suzy McKee Charnas https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscFOJxr8I6ak0Ix5zGw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6iUW8f3poMLg-gVdw, "an award-winning feminist science fiction writer who in a four-novel series created a post-holocaust, male-dominated society called the Holdfast that is liberated by an army of women," died January 2, the New York Times reported. She was 83. Charnas also wrote vampire fiction, YA fantasy novels with women as central characters, and a memoir about taking care of her father in his later years after a long period of estrangement.
The Holdfast Chronicles began with Walk to the End of the World (1974)and concluded 25 years later with The Conqueror's Child. The Times noted that the author "conceived a dystopic world in which an escaped female slave, Alldera, leads the rebellious Free Fems to brutally conquer and enslave their former male masters. The men had faulted women for the near-destruction of humanity, called the Wasting."
In 1999, Dunja M. Mohr wrote in the journal Science Fiction Studies that the series is unique in feminist science fiction "in that it reflects 25 years of the development of feminism... Investigating the raging war of the sexes. Charnas does not shy away from describing the slow--and sometimes grim--process of change leading from dystopia to utopia, the painful purging of psychological and physical violence involved."
The other books in the Holdfast series are Motherlines (1978) and The Furies (1994). The Conqueror's Child won the 1999 James Tiptree Jr. Award (now called the Otherwise), a literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that explore gender. Charnas also won a Nebula for the novella Unicorn Tapestry, which is a chapter in her 1980 novel, The Vampire Tapestry, and won a Hugo for "Boobs," a short story.
"Suzy, to me, was a lot like David Bowie," said Jane Lindskold, a science fiction and fantasy writer who knew Charnas from a writers' group in Albuquerque, N.Mex. "She followed her own muse. She could have just written only vampire books, but she did what she wanted to do."
Her last book, My Father's Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances (2002), was "about how she and her husband brought her long-absent father--he had left her family when she was a child--to live on their property in Albuquerque and her struggle to get to know him over nearly 20 years," the Times noted.
"The person who came to live next door to me was less my father than my father's ghost: the ghost of my father as I had known him and imagined him all my life," she wrote. "He was also, I suspect, the ghost of the man he himself had set out to be but never became.... Well, I'm a lucky devil: He was a good ghost, an instructive ghost."
This looks to be a fascinating TV show, and I adored Dav Patel in Slumdog Millionaire.
TV: The Key Man
Dav Patel (The Personal History of David Copperfield, Slumdog Millionaire) will star in and executive produce The Key Man https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscFOKkeUI6ak0IhhySA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6iUWJCtpoMLg-gVdw, a limited series based on the 2021 book The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale by Simon Clark and Will Louch. Deadline reported that the project is from Miramax Television, "part of the company's increased international focus, signaled by the hire three years ago of former NBC Universal International Studios executive Marc Helwig--who has deep European TV industry ties--as Miramax's Global Head of Television."
Mining the independent studio's library has been a priority for Helwigand his team, who have shepherded series projects based Miramax movies like The Gentlemen, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Gangs of New York, Chocolat, and The English Patient.Helwig said, "Miramax is a legacy company built on backing innovative, new voices, and we are recapturing that essence in television with our approach to working with many new and emerging voices in Europe and beyond." Patel executive produces The Key Man alongside Scott Delman (Station Eleven) and Florence Sloan (Dehli Crime), who had optioned the book.
I remember as a teenager, reading John Jakes books that my father had lying around, and though they were the book equivalent of McDonalds at the time (at least I thought so...they read like potboilers), I still watched the mini series with my dad and sometimes with my brothers, which was a rarity in our house. Talking about his books was a popular pastime among my parent's friends during cocktail parties.
Obituary Note: John Jakes
Author John Jakes https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscFOKxLkI6ak0Ih9xEw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6iUWMXxpoMLg-gVdw, a "writer of historical fiction whose generational family sagas of the American Revolution and the Civil War mingled real and imaginary characters and became runaway best sellers and popular television fare," died March 11, the New York Times reported. He was 90.
Jakes wrote about 60 novels, including westerns, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy and children's books. He was best known for two book series: the Kent Family Chronicles, eight volumes written in the 1970s to capitalize on the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations (55 million copies were sold), and the North and South Civil War trilogy, which was released in the 1980s (10 million copies).
By the 1990s, Jakes "had joined the charmed circle of America's big-name authors--among them Mary Higgins Clark, Tom Wolfe, James Clavell, Thomas Harris and Ira Levin--whose publishers paid millions in advances for multi-book deals, although they had only vague ideas what the books might say," the Times noted.
"I feel a real responsibility to my readers," Jakes told the Washington Post in 1982. "I began to realize about two or three books into the Kent series that I was the only source of history that some of these people had ever had. Maybe they'll never read a Barbara Tuchman book--but down at the Kmart they'll pick up one of mine."
Jakes began his career freelance writing in his spare time while working in advertising from 1954 to 1971. He published hundreds of short stories and wrote novels, primarily westerns and fantasies, some under the pen names Jay Scotland and Alan Payne. His breakthrough came in 1974 with the publication of The Bastard, the first volume of what would be the Kent Family Chronicles. Other books in the series include The Rebels, The Seekers (both 1975), which were adapted for television as mini-series in 1978 and 1979; as well as The Furies, The Titans (both 1976), The Warriors (1977), The Lawless (1978) and The Americans (1979).
His success prompted Harcourt Brace Jovanovich to commission a Civil War-era hardcover trilogy that included North and South (1982), Love and War (1984) and Heaven and Hell (1987). Another mini-series was adapted from those books.
After the success of the two earlier series, Random House paid Jakes a $4 million advance for the bestseller California Gold. A $10 million advance a year later produced the two-volume Crown Family Saga as well as In the Big Country (1993), a collection of his stories set in the American West.
"I love melodrama," he once told the Times in an interview. "I never outgrew my fondness for melodrama."
I LOVE reading things like this, that bookstores are finally having their day in the sun! It's also great to know that Amazon didn't crush the life out of the independent bookstore business (thank heaven), and that there are still wonderful places like Powells City of Books in Portland, OR, where you can go and commune with fellow booklovers and walk among the shelves, browsing for your next great read.
America’s
Most “Recession-Proof” Business is Bookstores
Good news for book lovers everywhere. According to a Forbes Advisor analysis, bookstores are projected to be the most recession-proof type of U.S. business in 2023 . The analysis, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Google Trend, sees bookstores at the number one spot, followed by PR firms, interior design services, staffing agencies, and marketing consulting services. Apparently, bookstores in the U.S. increased by 43% during the pandemic and also enjoyed a 16% wage growth. These stats, in addition to their comparatively low start-up costs, are what landed bookstores at the top of the Forbes list, which assessed 60 small business types.
Oh man, I wish to heck that they'd had these when I was in school! I would have been one very happy kid with a great big TBR of fresh books.
Cool Idea of the Day: Book Vending Machines in Schools
Sleepy Dog Books https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscFOMxb8I6ak0JBklHQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6iUXsT3poMLg-gVdw in Mount Pleasant, Mich., has set up book vending machines in the halls of two local elementary schools, Second Wave Media reported.
The vending machines, located in Fancher and Mary McGuire Elementary schools, contain more than 300 titles and are part of the school's Positive Behavior Intervention and Support program. Rather than take cash, the vending machines take book tokens, which students can earn for "making positive choices in their learning environment."
Jenny and Riley Justis, owners of Sleepy Dog Books, opened the bookstore in 2022. Jenny Justis told Second Wave: "By providing the machines and partnering with the District to bring the latest in book titles to the halls of these schools, we are hopeful to drive student interest inreading and passion for physical books."
Radiance and Eidolon (book 2 of the Wraith Kings) by Grace Draven were cheap (in price, not quality) ebook revamps of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale that I found unexpectedly while I was seeking other ebook deals on Amazon. Though these two fantasy romances appear to be self published (I could be wrong about that), they're well written and well edited (a rarity when it comes to self pubbed books), and the plots are fast moving and thrilling. Here's the blurbs:
Radiance: ~THE PRINCE OF NO VALUE~
Brishen Khaskem, prince of the
Kai, has lived content as the nonessential spare heir to a throne
secured many times over. A trade and political alliance between the
human kingdom of Gaur and the Kai kingdom of Bast-Haradis requires that
he marry a Gauri woman to seal the treaty. Always a dutiful son, Brishen
agrees to the marriage and discovers his bride is as ugly as he
expected and more beautiful than he could have imagined.
~THE NOBLEWOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE~
Ildiko,
niece of the Gauri king, has always known her only worth to the royal
family lay in a strategic marriage. Resigned to her fate, she is
horrified to learn that her intended groom isn’t just a foreign
aristocrat but the younger prince of a people neither familiar nor
human. Bound to her new husband, Ildiko will leave behind all she’s
known to embrace a man shrouded in darkness but with a soul forged by
light.
Two people brought together by the trappings of duty and
politics will discover they are destined for each other, even as the
powers of a hostile kingdom scheme to tear them apart.
Eidolon: **Sequel to RADIANCE and Book #2 in the Wraith Kings series**
In
a bid for more power, the Shadow Queen of Haradis unleashes a malignant
force into the world. Her son Brishen, younger prince of the Kai royal
house, suddenly finds himself ruler of a kingdom blighted by a diseased
darkness. His human wife Ildiko must decide if she will give up the man
she loves in order to save his throne.
Three kingdoms on the
verge of war must unite to save each other, and a one-eyed, reluctant
king will raise an army of the dead to challenge an army of the damned.
A tale of alliance and sacrifice.
Ildiko and Brishen's romance is just delicious and, though they're fantasy characters, they are full bodied and seem real enough to meet in person. Since, in a slight spoiler, things are somewhat wrapped up by the end of the second book, I've felt no need to buy the third, though I might later to see where the author could possibly have taken the couple in a final installment. I loved these two books, however, and would give them both a well deserved A-, and recommend them to those who enjoy both Beauty and the Beast and fish out of water romances.
Marion Lane and the Deadly Rose by T.A. Willberg is the second book in a delightful British historical mystery series that takes readers on a roller coaster ride through the subterrainian depths of Miss Bricketts Detective Agency, which is really more like a cross between MI5 and Hogwarts. Here's the blurb: The envelope was tied with three delicate silk ribbons: “One of the new recruits is not to be trusted…”
It’s
1959 and a new killer haunts the streets of London, having baffled
Scotland Yard. The newspapers call him The Florist because of the rose
he brands on his victims. The police have turned yet again to the
Inquirers at Miss Brickett’s for assistance, and second-year Marion Lane
is assigned the case.
But she’s already dealing with a mystery
of her own, having received an unsigned letter warning her that one of
the three new recruits should not be trusted. She dismisses the letter
at first, focusing on The Florist case, but her informer seems to be one
step ahead, predicting what will happen before it does. But when a
fellow second-year Inquirer is murdered, Marion takes matters into her
own hands and must come face-to-face with her informer—who predicted the
murder—to find out everything they know. Until then, no one at Miss
Brickett’s is safe and everyone is a suspect.
With brilliant twists and endless suspense, all set within the dazzling walls and hidden passageways of Miss Brickett’s, Marion Lane and the Deadly Rose is a deliciously fun new historical mystery you won’t be able to put down.
Though I love a good British mystery, especially cozy ones with all sorts of eccentric characters (which abound here), I'm always flummoxed at how full of self loathing the female protagonists most always are, and how the rampant misogyny of the men surrounding them is never questioned and rarely stood up to...why don't these women have more backbone? Why are they always so self-effacing and dressed in dreary, frumpy clothing? Why are the only women who seem to "matter" those who are members of the aristocracy? Marion is a smart woman and a talented engineer of gadgets, while also being a kind person who tries her best to help others. Yet she's repeatedly preyed upon by those who are in charge, and even when she's done brave and amazing things, she still gets a chewing out from her cold superiors. She also gets treated like crap by the only American at the agency, whom she has a crush on, but who thinks that a relationship between the two of them would be impossible. Marion doesn't question this, she just lets him crush her heart. Ugh. Show some spine, woman! Tell him he's no prize himself, and then find another guy! Anyway, the prose is nice and crisp and the plot dances along gracefully. I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery and its ending, and I will probably read the next book in the series once I can afford to do so. I'd recommend this book to anyone who read the first Marion book.
No comments:
Post a Comment