Welcome to April showers and Springtime for Seattle, which always includes lots of rain and hail storms, but also lots of budding greenery and flowers. It's been unseasonably warm outside here in Maple Valley, but I've not spent a lot of time enjoying the sunshine, because there are still books to read and review, though my TBR is becoming quite anemic, unfortunately. Below are some fun tidbits, including an April Fool's joke from Shelf Awareness to start us off (though I do wish that there was a U of Gallifrey in existence...I'd sell a kidney to actually attend classes in such a place! Imagine hanging out with characters from Doctor Who!)
The
University of Gallifrey Press Takes Off
The University of Gallifrey Press,
specializing in alternate history,
will start publishing in 2025, with a
backlist of 3,259 (and counting)
titles. The first two books, Harnessing
the Wibbly-Wobbly: The Physics
of Time and Custard by Petronella
Osgood and Sartorial Lyricism: Celery,
Scarves, and Swoopy Coats by Tom Baker,
will be printed by Johannes
Gutenberg under the Torchwood imprint.
UGP reported that so far, 37
history editors have quit in
frustration, but the nonfiction fiction
editors are all lifers.
The Union of Remote Space Workers will
be responsible for coordinating
multiple metaverse metadata and have
already confirmed that all errors
are correct in at least one timeline.
According to UGP marketing director
Harriet Jones, slipped pub dates are
expected to create Amazon chargebacks
that would make a Dalek cry, but
"we're working with operatives on
the Seattle-based '1994 Project' to
help exterminate the problem."
--Davida Breier <mailto:dgb@jhu.edu>
Quotation
of the Day
'A Table of Books Is a Work of Art
Itself'
"Independent bookstores are the
center of intellectual life for most of
us. The tables covered with titles
represent possibilities. A table of
books is a work of art
itself."--Percival Everett
I was a big fan of John Barth when I was about 10 years old. I read the Sot Weed Factor and some of his critical essays, and found his prose to be divine. RIP to an author who had a life well lived.
Obituary
Note: John Barth
John Barth, "a practitioner and a
theoretician of postmodern literature" who contended in a 1967
Atlantic Monthly essay "The Literature of Exhaustion" that
"old conventions of literary narrative can be, and indeed have
been,
'used up,' " died yesterday, the
New York Times reported. He was 93.
Barth published nearly 20 novels and
collections of short stories, three
books of critical essays, and a book of
nonfiction pieces. His
best-known works included The Floating
Opera (1956), The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), and Giles Goat-Boy (1966).
The Floating Opera, Barth's first book,
was "narrated by a character who
considers killing himself out of
existential boredom before realizing
that this choice would be as
meaningless as any other," the Times wrote.
The Sot-Weed Factor was "a huge
picaresque written in Elizabethan style
and laden with puns," the Times
observed. "It tells the story of
Ebenezer Cooke, the 'sot-weed factor'
(tobacco peddler) of the title,
who travels through a sinful
late-17th-century world with his twin
sister and his tutor, struggling to
maintain his virtue." Time magazine
called the novel "that rare
literary creation: a genuinely serious
comedy." And critic Leslie
Fiedler, who taught with Barth at the State
University of New York at Buffalo,
called the novel "closer to the Great
American Novel than any other book of
the last decade."
This sounds absolutely fascinating, so I will be on the look out for it, either on regular TV or streaming via one of the main services I subscribe to.
TV:
Family Reservations
Universal TV has acquired rights to
Liza Palmer's latest book, Family
which it will develop at NBC with
writer/executive producer Ilene
Chaiken (The L Word) and Keshet
Studios, Deadline reported.
"Liza Palmer's delicious book
brings together the very things I love
most in the world--food and family
drama!" said Chaiken. "I'm thrilled
and grateful that she has entrusted us
with the television adaptation."
Palmer added: "Family Reservations
is a labor of love that was written
every morning from 5:30 to 8:30 during
cancer surgeries and day-job
headaches. Over those long months and
years, the Winters became family
to me. I've ugly cried more times than
I'd like to admit because I now
know my little complicated family are
in the best of hands with the
brilliant, creative teams at Universal
Television, Keshet Studios and
NBC. Having these precious, complex
women in the capable hands of Ilene
Chaiken is truly a dream come true."
Here are the reviews:
Forgetting To Remember by MJ Rose is another of her delicious paranormal historical romance/adventure novels that are so addictive, I buy a copy the minute that it hits the shelves of the closest bookstore. Rose's prose is so elegant and engaging, and her plots so deep and fascinating that she never disappoints readers with a sub-par novel. Here's the blurb:
Discover a spellbinding love story in this dazzling time-travel adventure from the NYT bestselling author of The Last Tiara, M.J. Rose.
Setting
aside grief from the fallout of the second World War and putting her
energy into curating an upcoming show critical to her career as the
Keeper of the Metalworks at London’s renowned Victoria and Albert
Museum, Jeannine Maycroft stumbles upon a unique collection of
jewel-framed miniature eye portraits—a brilliant romantic device and
clandestine love token of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
One
piece among the assembly intrigues her more than all the others: a
twilight-blue man’s eye framed by opals shimmering with enchanting
flashes of fiery color. But the beauty is just the beginning. Not only
is the painting a self-portrait of one of her favorite Pre-Raphaelite
artists, Ashe Lloyd Lewis, but the brooch itself is a portal eight
decades into the past.
Despite being cast into an era she was
never meant to be in, Jeannine and Ashe develop an immediate and
passionate bond, complicated by the undeniable fact that she does not
belong in 1867, and the disaster about to destroy her family and
reputation in her time.
Striving to live a dual life and
dangerously straddling two time periods, Jeannine fights to protect her
career and her father from scandal in the present while desperately
trying to save her lover’s life in the past.
Forgetting to Remember—richly
embroidered with historical detail and heartbreaking conflict—is
another luscious and thrilling masterpiece by M.J. Rose. A beautiful and
compelling story of art, war, magic, and survival, wrapped in a love
that defies time.
Having been a fan of the pre-Raphaelites for decades, (Christina Rossetti, my namesake and favorite poet, was the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters in the 19th century) I was thrilled to read a novel that delves into the creation of these bejeweled eye-broaches that lovers had painted for one another, which allowed them to remain anonymous to society at a time when reputations were very important to one's lifestyle and livelihood. I found myself wondering if Neil Gaiman could take a book like this, which deals with time-travel and people falling in love across the centuries, and turn it into a tender and lovely episode of Doctor Who. Wouldn't that be grand?! Anyway, I don't want to spoil the book for those who haven't read it, but I adored Jeannine and Ash's romance, and I shed more than a few tears at the bittersweet ending of the book. I'd give it an A, and recommend it to anyone who loves 19th century art and timeless love stories.
Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff is a dark and blood-drenched vampire fantasy novel that took me a week to read because it weighed in at over 700 pages!The author uses some high fantasy prose, mixed with regular prose and graphic novel/manga style drawings that are placed in front of, or inbetween most chapters of this mammoth tome of a novel. Here's the blurb: From New York Times bestselling author Jay Kristoff comes Empire of the Vampire, the first illustrated volume of an astonishing new dark fantasy saga.
From holy cup comes holy light;
The faithful hand sets world aright.
And in the Seven Martyrs’ sight,
Mere man shall end this endless night.
It
has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise. For nearly
three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their
eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny
sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness.
Gabriel de León is a
silversaint: a member of a holy brotherhood dedicated to defending
realm and church from the creatures of the night. But even the Silver
Order could not stem the tide once daylight failed us, and now, only
Gabriel remains.
Imprisoned by the very monsters he vowed to
destroy, the last silversaint is forced to tell his story. A story of
legendary battles and forbidden love, of faith lost and friendships won,
of the Wars of the Blood and the Forever King and the quest for
humanity’s last remaining hope:
The Holy Grail.
I found this book to be more horror/gory fiction, with fight scenes in every chapter, than "dark fantasy," which as a genre deserves better than to be thrown in with horror and Game of Thrones-esque political military/war fantasy fiction. Still, I slogged through chapter after chapter of overblown prose and redundancies that any decent editor should have caught and excised with a hard hand on the red pen. As a story, Empire should have clocked in at 400 pages of nice tight prose and plot-marching paragraphs. It starts slow and sad, and finally gets moving about 120 pages in, which is deadly for a book of this scope. If you're going to engage and retain readers, you need to grab them by the throat in the first 25 pages and never let them go until the final paragraph. SHOW, don't TELL, Mr Kristoff. A tall Australian with a bitter and dim outlook on life (if you read his bio at the back of the book), I wanted to smack him in the face with his grumpy whinging throughout the novel about how value-less human life is, and how easily expendable women and children and the elderly have become in his world because, well, men who have no morals or decency and who are drug addicts or power-hungry, emotionally dead killers are who can, and should, run the world into ruin. So the question that isn't answered throughout this gore-fest is, if the evil Vampire kings lay waste to all the human villages and kill anyone who isn't a blood-sucking immortal horror or a slave/thrall, what is left to rule over? What's left to feed on if humanity is dead? No one seems to know or care in this bleak and depressing story. I'd give it a B- (and I'm being generous) and only recommend it to guys who love the role playing games or computer games where they're warriors out to kill monsters and occaisionally have sex with whatever woman happens to be under their power at the time. TBH, you couldn't pay me to read the 700 page sequel to this dreadful novel.
Spelled With a Kiss by Jessica Rosenberg is a cozy paranormal romance/mystery that I got for less than a dollar on sale for my Kindle Paperwhite. So-called "cozy" books are novels that don't have blood or gore or graphic sex scenes that can make readers cringe. They're what used to be called "Positive" or happy stories that end satisfactorily and well. The cover art for cozy books are almost always lovely, and the enticing cover art here is no exception. Here's the blurb: The stakes are higher in real life than fiction. Then again, so are the rewards.
Juliette
just wants to run her bookshop, recommend great reads, hunt for
treasures at estate sales, and savor quality time with her family and
friends.
Her magic has other plans.
The emerging magical
ability to return lost things to their owners has thrown her a
curveball. She can’t communicate with someone who’s dead…or can she?
As
she races against time to reunite lost loves and right tragic wrongs,
Juliette is handed the power to finally overcome her chronic anxiety and
debilitating panic attacks. But at what cost?
Will the help of a
familiar fortune teller, her closest friends, and found family be
enough for Juliette to battle the entity threatening her happiness? Or
is she destined to be on her own forever?
Juliette once again
dives into an adventure she used to only read about in Spelled With a
Kiss. Book 2 in the Wyrd Words & Witchcraft Paranormal Women’s
Fiction series is set in the same quaint beach town as Jessica
Rosenberg's delectable Baking Up a Magical Midlife series.
My only problem with this book is that the female protagonist, Juliette, is an overly anxious, awkward and stupid mess of a character, whom I had trouble identifying with as an extrovert without autism or severe anxiety/depression or other mental health issues. I find it hard to understand someone who falls apart at the slightest roadblock or good looking male character to come her way. Characters like Juliette always make me want to yell "GROW A SPINE ALREADY and GET ON WITH IT!" while I hurl the book into a wall in frustration. However, the prose is lyrical and the plot easy like Sunday morning. Books like this are perfect "palate cleansers" for the mind, when I've had to wade through dark and depressing books like Empire of the Vampire. I would give this quick read a B, and recommend it to anyone who wants something quick to read on an airplane or in a doctor's waiting room.
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