Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg, The Traveling Tea Shop by Belinda Jones, The Tygrine Cat by Inbali Iselrles, and A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

A book that I really want to read when it comes out next week, reviewed on Shelf Awareness:

Review: The Dream Lover

 

Elizabeth Berg (Tapestry of Fortunes

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz24739818)

has a gift for creating characters who reflect the emotional lives of

ordinary contemporary women. In The Dream Lover, George Sand, the first

female bestselling writer in France, is in her 70s. Aware she is

beginning to fail, she recalls her astonishing life, full of enviable

literary accomplishments and famous friends and lovers, to find "the

beating heart of what I most truly was." That vital thing is the need to

love and be loved, "for the rest," she says, "is dust."

What comprises "the rest" in Sand's case is, of course, a very great

deal. Born Aurore Dupin and raised by her grandmother on the family

estate in Nohant, Sand marries young but eventually leaves her

philandering husband for Paris, intent on becoming a writer. She finds

work as a theater critic for Le Figaro, dressing as a man so that she

can buy the inexpensive tickets forbidden to women. Her novels, which

she writes at night, are lavishly praised for their eloquence and

unsparing depiction of the realities of domestic life, especially for

women. Her circle of lovers and friends widens to include Chopin, Liszt,

Hugo and Flaubert. She lives for the passion of each new affair before

it, too, runs its course.

It is the actress Marie Dorval, Sand's dearest friend and one of a very

few women in her close circle, who most breaks Sand's heart. Marie knows

Sand best. "You have an expectation of something that cannot occur," she

says, of Sand's unhappiness in the face of love's inevitable

disappointments.

Berg's prose is lovely, recalling the rhythms of 19th-century speech.

The story proceeds episodically, much as a life might be remembered. Her

Paris and Nohant are flawlessly rendered, rich with the textures of

daily life. She avoids loading her narrative with extraneous details,

keeping the focus on her protagonist, through whose distinct sensibility

we experience the fictional present. The tension that fuels The Dream

Lover comes from making the larger-than-life experiences of its

extraordinary historical protagonist secondary to her emotional core and

her consuming need for love. A less ambitious writer might have used

Sand's glittering and unconventional life to affirm the attainability of

everyday fantasies, but Berg, with her trademark sensitivity and

compassion, has instead imagined a more human George Sand, one who is

ultimately defined by the universal need to be true to oneself, and to

an abiding love. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and

reviewer

The Traveling Tea Shop was a clearance book at Barnes and Noble, and it looked like my kind of chick lit, considering how much of an Anglophile that I am and a lover of a good cuppa tea and sweets. Unfortunately, the book reads like it was written for pre-teen girls, and the characters are as simple as the prose. Though there is something to be said for a book that is so easy to understand that you know what will happen throughout the book by page 25, I usually prefer my protagonists to be not quite so cliched and stereotypical. Laurie, the main character, runs a foodie travel company with her friends, and when she meets a famous TV chef, Pamela, and books a trip through New England with Pamela and her spoiled, obnoxious daughter Ravenna and her mother, spunky meddling senior Gracie, things are supposed to go awry, and of course secrets are to be revealed, and everyone is supposed to fall in love and find themselves. During this journey by red double-decker bus, the group stop at specific hotels and restaurants and bakeries that actually exist, and talk to chefs who are real, but they do so in a disturbingly "product placement in a movie" fashion, with paragraphs that ooze a fawning servility that makes the reader wonder whether or not the author was paid to place an advertisement for these establishments in her novel. Each cake or cupcake is more delicious than the last, each chef more amazing, each town in New England full of beauty and wonder. Having actually lived in Cambridge, Mass, where Harvard is located, and several other towns nearby, I know for a fact that Boston and Cambridge aren't that beautiful, and the prices for food and drink are astronomical and therefore not easy for students to afford. As a graduate student, I couldn't afford most of the places in Harvard Square, and forget going out to clubs at night, I couldn't afford even one drink, especially after paying huge rents on my one room in an apartment with three other people. I could not afford to eat anything but Ramen noodles and beans, and I worked nearly 35 hours a week in addition to writing my master's thesis. I drove a car for a blind woman for awhile, and traffic in Boston and Cambridge is horrifying, drivers speed and honk and are obnoxious and traffic is always bumper to bumper. So I can't imagine that a huge red English bus would just sail through without at least encountering a fender-bender or a few rude drivers yelling and cutting the bus off. I have also been to Connecticut, which is also not what most people would call beautiful, and I have lived in a Maine town that bordered a town in New Hampshire. While they were nice little towns that were quaint and all, and the lobster and other local dishes were fresh, they certainly weren't something to go into rhapsodies of bliss over. Another problem with the characters is why they're all so solicitous and in thrall to the horrid Ravenna. Seriously, the main character blubbers and apologizes and nearly loses the supposed love of her life because she feels she somehow needs permission from this vile teenage creature to proceed with a relationship. Laurie is so servile, such a wimp that it is difficult not to despise her. But then, Pamela also knuckles under to her daughter and is, for some bizarre reason, terrified of the child. Ravenna's father also somehow thinks his daughter is the second coming, which is just plain weird, as he hasn't even been around for most of her life. The only person in the group with any spine at all is granny Gracie, who is manipulative and used for comic relief from the rest of the fools in this book. I'd give this book a very generous C-, and I would recommend it to those who like the brainless Harlequin romances of the 1960s-70s. 

The Tygrine Cat by Inbali Iserles is that rare book that straddles the YA/Adult genre with ease. It concerns the lives of feral cats and of two groups of cats locked in a struggle for the souls of kitties everywhere. Here's the blurb:
Ancient tribal rivalries among cats come down to one kitten, Mati, unaware of his status as the Tygrine heir, against the powerful Suzerain of the Sa Mau, and it is all played out as Mati attempts to find a home among the feral cats of Cressida Market. Left on shipboard by his mother, Mati ends up at Cressida Lock far from his Egyptian birthplace. The Cressida Cats are wary of strangers but an elderly tom takes him in and two kittens befriend him. Unfortunately, an assassin is not far behind. Mati's struggles for acceptance are complicated by events set in motion by the Sa Mau, intent on domination of the cat world. Readers will sympathize with the courageous kitten, applauding his ultimate success and the difficult decision he makes about his best friend Jess, whose loyalties lie with the human world. The allusions to Egyptian mythology add interest. But the world of this fantasy also involves a spirit dimension, Fiåney, that is less clearly explained, and travels there are a convenient but not quite believable device for moving the characters along. First published in England, this first novel should appeal to lovers of animal fantasies looking for somewhere to go after Erin Hunter's Warriors series. Reviewer: Kathleen Isaacs 

I disagree with Ms Isaacs that the spirit dimension isn't clearly explained. I felt that it was well outlined by Mati in her encounters with the ghosts of wise cats long dead, including his momcat. The prose is just sophisticated enough to keep the story from being childish and the plot is intricate but still moves at a graceful pace. Though I wish that Mati understood and came into his powers before the very end, I was totally caught up in the lives of the feral cat colonies and in the life of the cat Jess, who has an elderly man to care for. I'd give this nice short fantasy an A, and recommend it to cat-lovers and those interested in feline history.

A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear is the 12th Maisie Dobbs mystery novel. Having read and loved all her previous mysteries, I was excited for this one because I knew Maisie had gotten married to James Compton at the end of the last novel, and I was hoping that this book would find her settled and happy before the dawn of the second world war (the novel takes place in 1937).Unfortunately, SPOILERS AHEAD, Maisie's husband dies in an airplane crash and she miscarries their child, so when we actually get into the story with Maisie, she's grief-stricken and avoiding returning home because she can't face the sympathy of her relatives and friends in England. While sailing home, she gets off the ship in Gibraltar, and uncovers a mystery while there that absorbs her time and helps keep her mind off of her pain. Here's the blurb:

Maisie Dobbs returns in a powerful story of political intrigue and personal tragedy: a brutal murder in the British garrison town of Gibraltar leads the investigator into a web of lies, deceit, and danger.

Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability—and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now, all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England: her aging father, Frankie Dobbs, is not getting any younger.

On a ship bound for England, Maisie realizes she isn't ready to return. Against the wishes of the captain who warns her, "You will be alone in a most dangerous place," she disembarks in Gibraltar. Though she is on her own, Maisie is far from alone: the British garrison town is teeming with refugees fleeing a brutal civil war across the border in Spain.

And the danger is very real. Days after Maisie's arrival, a photographer and member of Gibraltar's Sephardic Jewish community, Sebastian Babayoff, is murdered, and Maisie becomes entangled in the case, drawing the attention of the British Secret Service. Under the suspicious eye of a British agent, Maisie is pulled deeper into political intrigue on "the Rock"—arguably Britain's most important strategic territory—and renews an uneasy acquaintance in the process. At a crossroads between her past and her future, Maisie must choose a direction, knowing that England is, for her, an equally dangerous place, but in quite a different way.

There's an air of sadness that permeates this novel, and Maisie herself seems isolated and stubbornly unhappy. While it seems that she could find solace with her beloved father and friends, she prefers to throw herself into this dangerous case and she seems to lack compassion and the touch of psychic understanding that she usually displays. While I understand that everyone grieves differently, I was worried that Maisie would harm herself halfway through the novel, and by the end I was glad that she'd chosen to live and help others, but was distraught that she might never return home to her elderly father. Still, Maisie is a strong woman, and I am sure that she will come back to herself in the next novel, ready to take on the Nazi threat in WWII with her nursing and sleuthing skills. I'd give this novel an A, and recommend it to all the fans of Maisie Dobbs mysteries.

Clarke University Crook Sentenced, Poetry Month, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, When in Doubt, Add Butter by Beth Harbison and The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

So I've been devouring books from my TBR at a pretty rapid rate, and I now have 5 books to review, so I will have to keep the tidbits here from being too long.

Personally, I feel that this dirtbag should have gotten at least 10 years for taking advantage of the wonderfully kind people, mostly nuns, who work at the bookstore at Clarke College, now Clarke University. I mean seriously, this guy has done this twice, and they will probably parole him after a couple of years so that he can do it again! Horrible!

Ex-University Bookstore Manager Sentenced for Embezzlement

James Spaulding, former manager of the Clarke University bookstore in

Dubuque, Iowa, was sentenced to four years

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz24699849

in federal prison for embezzling more than $300,000 from the school by

creating a fake book wholesaler, the Gazette reported. Spaulding pleaded

guilty http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz24699850 to

the charges last December.

From Shelf Awareness, a tidbit of poetry for April.

As Poetry Month begins, I've saved the best for last. From a

Guardian essay, "I am in love with poetry

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz24706384,"

by Andrew O'Hagan: "Maybe the optimists are right; maybe poetry does

help you live your life. And maybe they are more right than they know,

and it rounds you out for death, 'the dark backing that a mirror needs,'

as Saul Bellow writes in Humboldt's Gift, 'if we are to see

anything....' And where the times are brutal and the banks are deluded

and the adverts are venal and the news is all lies, perhaps the madness

of poets represents the rage of the imagination against the viciousness

of reality. 'I could see that Humboldt was pondering what to do between

then and now,' writes Bellow, 'between birth and death, to satisfy

certain great questions. Such brooding didn't make him any saner.' Yet

the world is more than the settled mind, said John Clare, Robert

Fergusson, Arthur Rimbaud and Sylvia Plath. It is more than our ordered

sense of it, and poetry is the least servile of all our forms. That is

why I love it." --Robert Gray

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr has gotten buckets of good ink and pixels from the media, famed authors and book reviewers, so that made me somewhat leery of it. Don't get me wrong, literary fiction can be wonderful, but in this era, it can also be horrendously pretentious, overwritten and deadly dull. Especially, I've noticed, when it is written by men. Again, that is not to say that there are women who write horribly pretentious books that will bore you to death by page 25 (I'm looking at you, Joyce Carol Oates), but I've noticed that books by say, Jonathan Franzen are more likely to be insomnia cures than books by Jennifer Wiener or Erica Bauermeister. 

So I was amazed when I sat down to read  All the Light late Saturday morning and ended up looking up at 6 pm, having read the entire book in one sitting. I honestly could not put it down. Riveting barely covers it. Brilliant writing, a complex but clear plot and fascinating characters combine to make this a "modern day classic" as so many reviewers say about books that have no claim to such a title, while this one does.

 Here's the blurb, which contains SPOILERS, as does the review itself:

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Finalist for the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2014

For once, I am in complete agreement with the California newspapers and their assessments of Doerr's writing and use of metaphor.  I was so caught up in Marie-Laure's life that I was devastated that we don't know what happened to her father, though Doerr does tell us that he was in some kind of concentration camp, so the reader intuits that he died there, either of starvation or he was shot or gassed. And I have to note that, as a person whose grandparents were first generation in this country (my great-grandparents emigrated from Germany and Switzerland and Ireland) I grew up with an understanding of how cruel German people can be, and how prejudiced against anyone who isn't German and Lutheran. I had also interviewed a Mercer Island man who grew up in Germany prior and during WW2, and he explained to me that the Pimpfe and Hitler Youth were clubs for children that provided, at first, fun activities and social opportunities and, of course, food, at a time when there were a number of children who were orphaned, hungry and without many opportunities to better themselves. It was only gradually that the Nazis would program their hatred into these vulnerable children and teenagers. This former Nazi's information on his childhood backed up a lot of the scenarios in this book, when Werner is experiencing life in Hitler Youth and as a radio technician in the Nazi army. Though I realize we are supposed to have some sympathy for poor Werner, who, as an orphan, couldn't control much of his destiny, I felt less sympathy for him when he failed to help his friend Frederick, who was nearly killed by brutal bullies. He also purposely lead his friend Volkheimer to find resistance workers and kill them, and he kept blinding himself to the reality that he was as responsible for their deaths as Volkheimer was. Also, though Werner plays a pivotal role in saving Marie Laure, they only really meet once, so their lives are only "interwoven" indirectly for a majority of the book. Still, I was enchanted with their lives, and only disappointed that we never learn what happened to Marie Laure's papa the locksmith, or the huge diamond he sought to protect. I wondered if anyone ever found it while diving in the ocean, or while it was hidden in the cement bunker? At any rate, I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone, and I'd give it an A.

From the sublime to the ridiculously titled, today I just finished a book called When In Doubt, Add Butter by Beth Harbison. To be honest, I just picked it up because the cover had cupcakes on it, and because it was on sale for $4.99, and it sounded interesting on the back cover blurb. I was therefore surprised when I sat down to read it and finished it in four hours. Like the cupcakes pictured, it's a sweet and light confection of a book, with interesting, humorous characters and and inevitable HEA. Here's the blurb:

As far as Gemma is concerned, her days of dating are over. In fact, it’s her job to cater other peoples’ dates, and that’s just fine by her. At thirty-seven, she has her own business, working as a private chef, and her life feels full and secure. She’s got six steady clients that keep her hands full.

There’s Lex, the fussy but fabulous department store owner who loves Oysters Rockefeller and 1950s comfort food; Willa, who needs to lose weight under doctor’s orders but still believes butter makes everything better; a colorful family who may or may not be part of the Russian mob; an überwealthy Georgetown family; the picture-perfect Van Houghtens, whose matriarch is “allergic to everything”; and finally, a man she calls “Mr. Tuesday,” whom she has never met but who she is strangely drawn to.

For Gemma, cooking is predictable. Recipes are certain. Use good ingredients, follow the directions, and you are assured success. Life, on the other hand, is full of variables. So when Gemma’s takes an unexpected turn on a road she always thought was straight and narrow, she must face her past and move on in ways she never would have imagined. Because sometimes in life, all you need is a little hope, a lot of courage, and—-oh yes—-butter.

Obviously, this was packaged as a fluffy "chick lit" novel, when in reality, it's not quite as fluffy as the title and the blurb suggest.SPOILERS AHEAD

Gemma has a one-night stand with a really hot guy, and though she uses condoms, they're 7 years old and no longer viable, so she gets pregnant for the second time at age 37. Her first pregnancy was at age 17, when a guy she falls in love with in high school totally rejects her when he discovers she's pregnant. So Gemma does the right thing and puts the baby up for adoption, realizing that she hasn't got the money or time or understanding to raise a baby herself. Why she doesn't use birth control this first time is unclear, but Gemma does acknowledge that anyone looking at her life would think she's stupid to get pregnant accidently twice. Still, she is afraid to tell Paul, though it is patently obvious to readers that she is in love with him, and that he's been flirting with her for a long time as a client for good reason. Yet Gemma's deft hand in the kitchen and her love affairs aren't even what made me like her, initially, it was her kindness and care of her clients, especially Willa, who is immobilized by her obesity, and who needs help in figuring out how to cook healthy and eat properly in order to lose weight and end her isolation. Though I believe that you can be overweight and exercise and still be healthy, I felt a kinship with Willa and I understood how she felt about hiding away from a society that spurns and judges all women based on how they look, what size clothing they wear and how easily they give up their lives to men in relationships, and of course how many children they produce for said men. There are a lot of good questions that Gemma ponders about the desirability of children and family over a career, and how food can be misused by over and underweight women. A definite B+, with a recommendation to those who are "foodies" and those who like stories of women's growth.

I am almost certain that I've read The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen before, but it was so long ago that reading it again only felt like slight deja vu.Here's the blurb:Emily Benedict has come to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realizes that mysteries aren’t solved in Mullaby, they’re a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, not only wishing to satisfy the town’s sweet tooth but also dreaming of rekindling the love she fears might be lost forever. Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily’s backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.

I really enjoyed this confection of a book, but then, I already expected to, because I've read all of Allen's other books. She combines magic realism with a bit of mystery and chick lit to create books that are pure pleasure to read. Though Emily is something of a wimp, she's still young enough that it isn't an annoying dealbreaker for the book. And of course, I found her grandfather, the giant, to be fascinating. A well-earned B+, with a recommendation to those who like Alice Hoffman's magical realism, or books like The Night Circus.

I have two other books that I need to review, but for now, I think I will save the Tygrine Cat and A Dangerous Place for my next blog post, later this week.

The Cost of Being a Bibliophile, Amazon's Takeover of South Lake Union in Seattle, the Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen, The Witch of Painted Sorrows by MJ Rose, and Prudence by Gail Carriger

The cost of my book addiction? I spent at least a thousand dollars last year on books. I figure I've been reading an average of 200 books a year for the past 50 years (I started reading when I was 4, and I am 54 now) so that comes out to 10,000 books I have read so far. I have probably spent at least $25K on books in my lifetime. So yeah, that amounts to something, especially for just one bibliophile. 

Seattle's South Lake Union has become a hotbed of Geekery since Amazon decided to build some very spiffy offices there, and create a transportation system for their workers. 
 

Amazon's lease of a full city block in Seattle's South Lake Union

neighborhood, next to its headquarters, "puts the firm on track to

eventually occupy about 10 million square feet

<http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz24625594>

in downtown Seattle--or one-fourth of the market's inventory of premium

office space," the Seattle Times reported. On Tuesday, the company

confirmed it will move into 817,000 square feet at Troy Block, a

two-building complex.

"We've agreed to lease the Troy Block and we're really excited to

continue growing our urban campus in the heart of Seattle," John

Schoettler, Amazon director of global real estate and facilities.

Amazon's "rapid growth has put pressure on rents for offices and

apartments in the area, even as it's ignited an unprecedented boom in

apartment construction," the Seattle Times wrote.

"Every Seattle office tenant who has negotiated a lease in the last

couple of years has felt the 'Amazon Effect,' " said tenant broker Brian

Hayden of Flinn Ferguson. "The rate at which Amazon has been absorbing

space has had a significant effect on Seattle's overall vacancy rate,

which increases landlord confidence and puts upward pressure on rents." 

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen is the 5th book of hers that I've read, and enjoyed. Allen's books are similar to Alice Hoffman's, in that they all contain an element of magical realism, and all have female protagonists attempting to deal with their powers of one sort or another in the real world. Here's the blurb:

It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather and once the finest home in Walls of Water, North Carolina—has stood for years as a monument to misfortune and scandal. Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite Paxton Osgood—has restored the house to its former glory, with plans to turn it into a top-flight inn. But when a skeleton is found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, long-kept secrets come to light, accompanied by a spate of strange occurrences throughout the town. Thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the passions and betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover the truths that have transcended time to touch the hearts of the living.

Allen's prose is addictive, so refreshingly clean and smooth that it glides along the greased rails of the finely tuned plot like a bullet train to happytown. Her books are easy, delightful reads that are replete with characters that most readers will recognize and feel comfortable with right away. In this instance, Willa has settled in her hometown to try and outlive her past reputation as a prankster and general ne'er do well. She encounters Paxton Osgood's brother Colin, and from then on, it's a race to see who will find true love first, Pax and Sebastian, whom everyone assumed was gay in high school because he dressed nicely, or Willa and Colin, who has tried to stay as far away from his hometown and its obligations as possible. Though Paxton's character is more than a little obsessive-compulsive, and her beloved Sebastian is more than perfect, the mystery of whose bones are found under the peach tree next to the "Madam", an old family estate that Paxton has refurbished, keeps the burgeoning love affairs from getting too Harlequin-romance-novelish. Though you can read this novel in a day, I'd still give it an A for excellent storytelling, strong female protagonists and grumpy grannies with secrets. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys "cozy" mysteries, chick lit, or wants a fun, relaxing read.

The Witch of Painted Sorrows by MJ Rose is a glorious, gorgeous novel of turn of the (20th) century Paris, redolent with beauty; beautiful characters, classic paintings, elegant clothing and the sparkle of France surrounded with the flowing, curvacious lines of Art Nouveau. Frankly, I've been in love with MJ Roses paranormal mystery-romance-suspense-thrillers since reading Seduction, the Book of Lost Fragrances and the Collector of Dying Breaths, all riveting reading. So it was with high hopes that I got my copy of The Witch of Painted Sorrows last week, and once I turned the first page, I was unable to put it down. Here's what I said in my Goodreads review:I was in raptures when I got this book in the mail, because I have loved all of MJ Roses recent novels of paranormal romance and suspense. This novel was thoroughly engrossing, with prose so evocative that I started reading it this morning and finished it this afternoon.The plot was breathtakingly swift, and the characters beautifully full bodied and intriguing. My only problem with the whole novel was the ending.
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!SPOILER ALERT!
I was saddened that Sandrine was unable to rid herself of the witch, and that in the end, she felt it necessary and right to allow herself to be possessed by La Luna. Most possessed people in myth, legend and historical reference become insane and die young, and none lead a happy, fulfilling life. How can Sandrine still be inside herself when she's hag-ridden by a 300 year old prostitute? She intimates that none of her work is her own, by the end, so I don't see how this can be an HEA for the protagonist when she's just a vessel and her body contains someone else's soul. I can't imagine Julien would be too thrilled, either. But readers don't get to know what his response will be to Sandrine's revelation at the end.

Here's the book blurb from B&N: 

Possession. Power. Passion. New York Times bestselling novelist M. J. Rose creates her most provocative and magical spellbinder yet in this gothic novel set against the lavish spectacle of 1890s Belle Époque Paris.

Sandrine Salome flees New York for her grandmother’s Paris mansion to escape her dangerous husband, but what she finds there is even more menacing. The house, famous for its lavish art collection and elegant salons, is mysteriously closed up. Although her grandmother insists it’s dangerous for Sandrine to visit, she defies her and meets Julien Duplessi, a mesmerizing young architect. Together they explore the hidden night world of Paris, the forbidden occult underground and Sandrine’s deepest desires.

Among the bohemians and the demi-monde, Sandrine discovers her erotic nature as a lover and painter. Then darker influences threaten—her cold and cruel husband is tracking her down and something sinister is taking hold, changing Sandrine, altering her. She’s become possessed by La Lune: A witch, a legend, and a sixteenth-century courtesan, who opens up her life to a darkness that may become a gift or a curse.

This is Sandrine’s “wild night of the soul,” her odyssey in the magnificent city of Paris, of art, love, and witchery.

Though I didn't like the ending, I still thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I look forward to Rose's next paranormal thriller. An A is the only grade one could possibly give such an evocative novel.  I would recommend it to anyone who loves historical romance, paranormal romance or suspense.

Prudence, the Custard Protocol: Book One by Gail Carriger is the 9th book of hers that I've read, and adored. Carriger's Steampunk world of Imperialist London and Europe is always so thrilling, bursting with werewolves, vampires, zeppelin airships and all manner of mechanical wonders. Then there's Prudence herself, the daughter of an Alpha werewolf and Lord, and a mother who is "Soulless," able to turn paranormals human at a touch. This has allowed Prudence the ability to "borrow" supernatural shape-shifting abilities from werewolves, werecats, weremonkies and vampires, again at a touch. While one would think that her parents and her foster father, Lord Akeldama the vampire, would be loathe to send her on a dangerous mission while she's still a teenager, they decide to use her as a secret agent anyway, and off she goes in her bespoke airship, the Spotted Custard, to India to solve the mystery and kidnapping of a general's wife by weremonkies. Here's the blurbs:

The new arc of the Parasol Protectorate steampunk series when Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama (a.k.a. Rue) takes off on a dirigible jaunt to India for, you guessed it, a cup of tea. This being a Gail Carriger (Waistcoats and Weaponry; Timeless) novel, her search for the perfect pekoe is soon interrupted by a dawning local rebellion, a significant kidnapping, werewolves, and some embarrassing wardrobe problems, none of which seem to fluster Rue or her pristine gal pal Primrose Tunstell. Definitely worth the ride; editor's recommendation. Barnes and Noble

Publishers Weekly

Carriger (Waistcoats and Weaponry) introduces fans of her Parasol Protectorate world to the next generation of madcap supernatural entities with the fluffy first Custard Protocol novel. Twenty-year-old Prudence “Rue” Akeldama and her best friend, Primrose Tunstell, have grown up in a version of Victorian England filled with vampires and werewolves. Rue, who can borrow the traits of any supernatural creature she touches, yearns for excitement and leaps at the chance to journey to India in search of a superior type of tea for her adoptive father, a wealthy vampire. She and her friends set off on a gaudy dirigible, only to run headfirst into danger, intrigue, and local politics. In a madcap adventure of manners, Rue veers from one threat to the next, always trying to maintain her dignity and composure. Fortunately for her, there’s never any sense of real danger. Carriger maintains a droll, tongue-in-cheek tone, and her protagonists are as concerned with witty banter and fashionable hats as they are with fighting for their lives. Series fans will enjoy this mischievous romp, which revisits old favorites while raising a new crop of charming characters.

I found some of the fussiness exhibited by Prim, Rue's best friend, to be trying, mainly because fainting young women stall the plot a bit. However, Rue's flirtation with Quesnel, Madam LeFou's son, make up for the fussiness quite nicely. I've found that reading Carriger always makes me head for my tea-maker and a nice cuppa. This particular book was no exception, and I was delighted by the discovery of a werelioness and the weremonkies. I look forward to the next book in the series, which I imagine will be just as much fun to read as this one. An A, and a recommendation to those who like dry British wit, tea and fascinating supernatural characters.

LOC Prize for Erdrich, B&N's New Bags, Saul Bellow, Bittersweet by Colleen McCullough, Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich, and Along For the Ride by Sarah Dessen

Congratulations to a wonderful author!

Author/bookseller Louise Erdrich has won the Library of Congress Prize

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz24520143

for American Fiction, which will be awarded at the National Book

Festival in Washington, D.C., on September 5, the New York Times

reported. The award recognizes writers with "unique, enduring voices"

whose work deals with the American experience. Erdrich is the author of

Love Medicine, The Round House and Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country,

among other books, and owner of Birchbark Books and Native Arts

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz24520144 in Minneapolis, Minn.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said that Erdrich "has

portrayed her fellow Native Americans as no contemporary American

novelist ever has. Her prose manages to be at once lyrical and gritty,

magical yet unsentimental, connecting a dream world of Ojibwe legend to

stark realities of the modern-day."

I want one of these bags in a bad way.

B&N's New Bags Feature Classics' First Pages

 Barnes & Noble has redesigned its shopping bags

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz24541263

to feature the text of the first pages of classic books such as Moby

Dick, The Wizard of Oz, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Alice in

Wonderland, according to Ad Age's Creativity, which commented: "The

designs are meant to promote Barnes & Noble as a physical destination

that provides a tactile shopping experience--part of which is the act of

leaving with a shopping bag."

"The bag serves as advertisement and reminder of the bookstore and thus

is an essential part of the brand's communications," Sagi Haviv, a

partner at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, the design firm that created

the bags, commented. "However, this new shopping bag series does more

than promote the brand itself; it reflects the love of books and itself

provides a book experience--you can even start reading them on the way

home."

B&N will begin distributing bags to its stores this month.

From Shelf Awareness on a new book about Saul Bellow: 

"Some essays are on Jewish writers: Sholom Aleichem (the "great Jewish

humorist"); Ben Hecht, "who roars like an old-fashioned lion"; Abraham

Cahan; and Bellow's good friend Philip Roth. In a 1959 piece on Goodbye,

Columbus, he calls the young Roth "skillful, witty, and energetic... a

virtuoso," and Bellow tended to be harsh on contemporary writers. His

favorites were the past masters Tolstoy, Mann, Proust and

Conrad--another immigrant writer. For Bellow, the most important element

in a novel (that "latter-day lean-to, a hovel in which the spirit takes

shelter," as he described it in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech) was

the "stature of characters." Bellow frequently commented on the absence

of such in modern literature. Two essays, more than 40 years apart, are

about Ralph Ellison: "He had a great deal to teach me."

Ah, the struggles only a bibliophile knows: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/the-struggle-is-very-real?bffbbooks#.bj0qwAjkaQ

Bittersweet by Colleen McCullough was her last published novel before she died recently. I bought the novel because I gathered that it was a historical romance set after WW1 in Australia. What I didn't realize until I got the book was that it was written in passive construction and in an omniscient POV, so, though the characters were interesting, it was a tough slog through sticky prose in a slow, meandering plot. Here's the blurb:

Colleen McCullough’s new, romantic Australian novel about four unforgettable sisters taking their places in life during the tumultuous years after World War I is “just as epic as her ultra-romantic classic, The Thorn Birds” (Marie Claire).

Because they are two sets of twins, the four Latimer sisters are as close as can be. Yet each of these vivacious young women has her own dream for herself: Edda wants to be a doctor, Grace wants to marry, Tufts wants never to marry, and Kitty wishes to be known for something other than her beauty. They are famous throughout New South Wales for their beauty, wit, and ambition, but as they step into womanhood at the beginning of the twentieth century, life holds limited prospects for them.

Together they decide to enroll in a training program for nurses—a new option for women of their time. As the Latimer sisters become immersed in hospital life and the demands of their training, each must make weighty decisions about love, career, and what she values most. The results are sometimes happy, sometimes heartbreaking, but always…bittersweet.

Set against the background of a young and largely untamed nation, “filled with humor, insight, and captivating historical detail, McCullough’s latest is a wise and warm tribute to family, female empowerment, and her native land” (People).

 Though I found the sisters Latimer fascinating by various degrees, I thought their continual indecision, their waffling and petty cruelties and their horrible mother's interference in their lives to be off-putting. I loved the backdrop of the Australian hospital and the way it was run at the time, with so little money, by turns funny and fascinating.  I did have a hard time understanding the constant whining of the most beautiful sister, Kitty, about her beauty. All women struggle, and have throughout history, to be taken seriously and to be valued for more than their bodies and their looks. For her to be so horribly set against her looks that she was willing to maim or kill herself seemed a bit hysterical and ridiculous. Her sister Edda was the opposite, in that she let nothing phase her and was willing to enter into a marriage with a homosexual but wealthy man in order to get to medical school and become a surgeon. I also found the character of Grace to be annoying, as once she gets what she wants and marries a salesman, she discovers that when he's laid off, and she has to manage a home and raise and feed children on her own, she's incapable of taking charity or working, so she kvetches and rails against her fate until her husband commit suicide. Then, suddenly, she makes a total turnabout in character and goes to her sister's wealthy husband and begs him to give her money enough to start over in America and a stipend for her family so she doesn't have to work. Even after Kitty divorces/leaves this possessive troll of a husband, we are to believe that he still provides for Grace and her children. I found that unbelievable, almost as much as "Tufts" the scientific sister not wanting to marry or even have an affair with the man she obviously loves. I didn't find the book warm or wise, I found it bizarre and turgid. Still, I would give it a B-, and recommend it to those who find Australian history and love stories told between 1920-1934 interesting.

I found a copy of Janet Evanovich's Wicked Business at Goodwill during their 50% off sale, and though I have never been a fan of popular "Bestseller" authors who churn out several books a year, all formulaic, mostly mysteries with the same central sleuth, I picked this up because it was her first attempt at a paranormal romantic mystery, and I love good paranormal romance. This, however, was not good paranormal romance, it was a complete disaster. The prose is simplistic, not in a clear and concise way, but in a condescending fashion that really hacked me off by the second chapter. The characters are too stupid to live, especially the main character, Lizzy Tucker, who spends most of her time baking and b*tching and moaning about her partner, Diesel, whom she drools over constantly (not in an adult way, more like a Catholic schoolgirl way, where you almost expect her to draw hearts on her notebook with their initials in it) and who is supposed to be helping her solve the mystery of an ancient book of sonnets in order to get the "Luxuria" stone, just one of a set of stones each based on one of the seven deadly sins. Luxuria is, of course, Lust, and that provides the author with a host of jokes and asides that are so adolescent, they have pimples. Lizzy and Diesel actually help their nemesis Wulf and his ridiculous minion Hatchet, who talks in faux-medieval style and is, like everyone else, a complete rube, brainless and foppish. The book comes with two stickers, yes, you read that right, stickers, in the back of the book, but the book itself was such an abomination, with a transparent plot and idiotic characters, that no one thought to remove the stickers, probably out of embarrassment that they'd bought it in the first place. The book doesn't even have a decent ending, it just stops, with the characters having done nothing lasting, nor having solved the mystery or completed their ridiculous quest. If I were the kind of person to burn books (I'm not) I'd set a match to this piece of crap in a heartbeat. As it is, I just have to give it a D- and recommend that any reader with an IQ above 50 stay far away from this abomination. I doubt that I will ever touch another Janet Evanovich novel again.

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen was another book that I got at the Goodwill sale, and fortunately, it made up for the foul taste that Wicked Business left in my mouth. Here is the blurb:
Studious good girl Auden, named for the poet, makes a snap decision to spend her summer before college at her father's beach house rather than with her mother, a professor whose bad habits include male grad students. Auden's parents divorced three years earlier, a split she's not yet over. Her remarried father has already produced another heir, a colicky baby named Thisbe (after a tragic figure from Shakespeare), with his young wife, Heidi, who owns a boutique. Feeling sympathy for stressed-out Heidi, Auden agrees to do the shop's bookkeeping, providing her with an instant social circle-the teenage clerks plus the boys from the neighboring bike rental, including hunky, wounded Eli. Both night owls, Auden and Eli bond when he coaxes her to experience childhood activities-bowling, food fights, learning to ride a bike-that her insufferable parents never bothered to provide. Auden's thoughtful observations make for enjoyable reading-this is solid if not "top shelf" Dessen: another summer of transformation in which the heroine learns that growing up means "propelling yourself forward, into whatever lies ahead, one turn of the wheel at a time." Publisher's Weekly.

Want a change from fictional neckbiters and backbiters? Welcome Auden West, a studious good girl about to be sun-kissed…Confiding and dry-witted, Auden's voice is like listening to your best bud while splitting a carton of Haagen-Dazs. Author Sarah Dessen beautifully captures that sense of summer as a golden threshold between past regrets and future unknowns, a time that shimmers with the sweet promise of now.
—The Washington Post 

I was surprised that Along for the Ride was so well written and that Auden, the protagonist, was such an intelligent and compassionate young woman. She is, in fact, more mature than her squabbling parents, especially her father, who seems to want the joy of children without the work or time it takes to raise them. Her mother is cold, calculating and controlling, and at the same time has an immature desire to know the details of her ex-husbands new marriage so that she can gloat about what a terrible parent he is/was/will be. Auden manages to rise above most of the fray, and eventually she gets her immature father to realize that he's missing out on the life of his baby daughter, just as he's missed out on most of her life. The parts of the book where Eli shows Auden the secret cafe within the laundromat, and where they go on overnight adventures was sublime. I enjoyed Auden's blossoming, and her instinct to help those in need was lovely and heartfelt. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to those who enjoy a good coming of age YA novel.