Historical Fiction – The Antidote to a Really Bad Week?

But no, I’m not going to talk about it. Just trust me, bad. Once the dust settled I wanted to settle down with a good book.  On a whim, I clicked on The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick in my Nook library. It was on sale a couple of months ago and I snagged it along with To Defy a King. Just a few pages in and I was hooked! It’s about the life of William Marshall, a 12th century knight at the time of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. I had already read a rather dry biography of the royal pair but this story brought them all to life. Marshall is very skilled and known for his loyalty, even when it costs him dearly.

What is it about history that is so comforting? The story is filled with war, family infighting, intrigue of every sort, envy, and betrayal. You know, just like real life. It also has loyalty, love, and hope which is real life also. We all have difficult people to deal with and not all situations end well. In fact, many are tragic. But the bigger picture shows that life and family are good, and so worth the energy and love we put into it.

Sorry if that sounds a little dramatic. I’m feeling very thoughtful these days and need to change gears. Since I finished the book I decided to start a little cross stitch project by Country Cottage Needleworks for my daughter whose baby girl is due in two weeks!!  I hope the blue background doesn’t look too boyish. It’s just supposed to be the sky. Melissa used to sing You Are My Sunshine when she was little and sounded so cute. This reminds me of her.

I hope everyone has a good week and Happy Reading!!

The Benefactress by Elizabeth Von Armin

In this amusing yet insightful story of good intentions gone horribly wrong, Elizabeth Von Armin takes a slightly darker turn than her usual light musings.  Though the world has changed much in the hundred years since this was written, people definitely have not.

Anna comes from a good English family but like many, have no money left and rely on marriage to get it. Her sister-in-law Susie has lots of money and took it upon herself to provide opportunities for Anna to get to that state all girls need to be in. Marriage. And not just anyone you happen to fancy. A proper marriage is to someone with money, no matter how old, awful, or undesirable they may be.

Though very pretty, Anna somehow does not marry, and prefers to spend afternoons in a beautiful church rather than interminable hours socializing with the rich yet unpopular Susie.  What she wants in life is both unheard of and dreadful. Anna wants to help others. When she inherits a property in Northern Germany she feels this is the answer to her prayers. But even out in the country with one’s own money and home Anna cannot escape the drama that others fill their lives with. The story is very amusing and quietly moving.

Elizabeth von Armin is one of those people I wish I knew in real life. Her love of nature, simple living, and solitude finds a kindred soul within me. Like no one else she understands women and the pressures they are under. In her writings, she creates beautiful sanctuaries for herself and invites us to join her. Here in the Benefactress, the haven designed to give a good life for others doesn’t go as she planned; in fact, quite the opposite. Giving seems so noble, in reality Anna’s life becomes enmeshed with drama queens, a power-hungry misogynist, envious neighbors, and plots to steal her money. There was also a hint of anti-Semitism from one of the characters, which given what happened a few decades down the road, was quite disturbing indeed.

I dream about solitude these days. How I would love to have time to center myself in a beautiful garden setting and become me again. But life thrusts its way into everything and responsibility weighs me down. I wonder what would happen if I were to inherit a self-sustaining property out in the country.  Would it be wonderful forever or fraught with difficulties like Anna’s little haven? Since you can’t escape problems or people, I have a feeling more of the latter.

But that’s ok. I’ll read Enchanted April where everything was perfect. Because we all need a daydream escape.

Sunday Salon – The Ultimate in True Crime

Back in the eighties and early nineties I was an ardent fan of true crime. It started with Ted Bundy: The Killer Next Door and moved on to other serial killers, domestic tragedies, and mafia leaders. I was starting to think I had a problem! But as they grew more formulaic, becoming light on story and heavy on police reports, my interest gradually faded. Problem solved.

Enter Eric Larson with his brand of true crime. He is scrupulous about fact yet tells a richly detailed story. The Devil in the White City tells the story of two men: serial killer H.H. Holmes (aka Herman Webster Mudgett) and Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the construction of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Amid slow committee decisions, financial problems, and temperamental architects, Burnham built Chicago’s wondrous White City while Holmes was constructing his terrifying dungeon where no one targeted for death left alive. Women, children, and a few men were among his victims.  He killed for profit and for fun. The juxtaposition of building the fair and wanton destruction of humanity was fascinating and kept what was really a rather horrifying story from becoming too dark.

I hope you pick up one of Eric Larson’s books this year. If you don’t want to read something this horrific, and I don’t blame you if you don’t, then try Thunderstruck.  I read this old-fashioned murder mystery years ago and it has none of the horrors of White City. It is set against the invention of wireless telepathy and is really quite interesting.

My review for Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman should be up soon. I hope everyone has a great reading week!

Sunday Salon – Old and New Genres

I read an outstanding book this week. I know already that it will be on my list of favorite books read in 2012. This is Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel The Night Circus, a beautifully crafted novel with magically wondrous imagery.

The actual plot of the story is a little disturbing.  Five-year old Celia arrives at the circus to meet her father Prospero the Enchanter after her mother commits suicide. After seeing her spectacular gifts in illusion he calls his friend Hector Bowen to stage a mysterious contest using her and someone of his choosing. After selecting a boy seemingly at random from the orphanage, Hector raises him solely to be part of this contest with Celia. The two illusionists learn that their only role in life is to be a pawn for the two men and must proceed without knowing the rules or when the game will end. Little do they know that the contest is over when one of them is dead.

The venue for the contest is The Night Circus, the extraordinary brainchild of Chandresh Christophe Lefevre and the two eventually become aware of the other’s identity. But what are two illusionists to do when they are in love and yet pitted against each other for the greatest stakes?

I so wanted to visit the Night Circus with its series of black and white tents, each holding a single event. Each tent is more fantastic than the last. Unbeknownst to Chandresh the two illusionists are creating additional tents with increasingly wondrous sights and experiences.

The abuse the two children experienced at the hands of their fathers was quite disturbing, Celia with physical and Marco with psychological. They were trapped for the whole of their lives to these two monsters. Yet, despite it all,  they managed to create something beautiful and love each other. It’s an uplifting story and I heartily recommend it.

It’s almost anticlimactic to talk about Silent Partner by Jonathon Kellerman. It’s a formulaic crime drama with a child psychologist as the investigator. Kellerman has been writing them for years but somehow I didn’t read this one from the 1980′s. His older ones are much, much better and I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It’s about two twins, the good and the bad, but because of their secrecy, it gets tangled up and it’s hard to know what is true or not. Of course there is the twist at the end that I wasn’t expecting and it all came together for one of those guilty pleasure type dramas.

Sunday Salon – Great Start to My Reading Year!

I thought it would take some time to get used to reading books from my Nook. Not so. After some font size and margin adjustments, I am going like gangbusters. I have already read two short stories and two full length books. Plus one regular book.

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley showed up in the Nook daily deals for $1.99. Years ago I read Mariana and was charmed by her use of time and rich details. I was not disappointed by this latest book. Carrie McClelland is writing a book about a little known uprising in 1708 when the Jacobites nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown.  Travelling to Slains castle in Scotland, a meeting place for those still loyal to the banished king, Carrie suddenly feels compelled to write in a heroine. She rents a cottage and writes compulsively about a young girl who moves to Slains and finds out later that all the characters actually existed and acted in the same manner that she wrote about.

As a direct ancestor to the heroine, Carrie wonders if some kind of ancestral memory is causing her to “remember” events.  After meeting the two handsome sons of her landlord, history begins to repeat itself.

I also read War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. It’s young adult literature and only about 120 pages long. But wow, what a great story! It was told from the view of the horse Joey, who was sold at auction to a drunk farmer and was lovingly raised by his son Albert. When WW1 started, the military bought up horses from all over and Joey was sold with thousands of others.  Not everyone realized that the cavalry was to be replaced by tanks and other modern weapons of war and it was horrific for the horses and their riders. Joey and his horse companion Topthorn braved muddy trenches, cold, starvation, and being captured by the Germans. It was a fantastic, uplifting story.

I love to read old classics and found a free book called Victorian Short Stories of Successful Marriages. Knowing how they treated women I thought it might be good for a laugh. And I did laugh at the first story. It was by Elizabeth Gaskell, one of my favorite writers of that period. Many know her as the author of Wives and Daughters and Cranford. But did you know she is an excellent biographer too? She wrote The Life of Charlotte Bronte which I consider to be the best biography ever written. It doesn’t even compare to the formulaic crap churned out nowadays.

But the remaining stories were written by men and got progressively more shocking in its horrible portrayal and treatment of women. I wasn’t laughing anymore. Ironically they thought they were such progressives. One story in particular will always stand out in my mind, horrible stuff.

But I shouldn’t say that. Stories such as these showed in shiny bright Technicolor why Victorian women rose up and demanded the right to vote, equality for women under the law, child labor laws, and front lines in the abolitionist movement.  Their suffering led to our freedom.

Right now I am reading Silent Partner by Jonathon Kellerman. It’s a crime drama with characters he has been writing for years but hey, I like the characters and there is always some sicko twist in his stories. And in my somewhat mundane vanilla pudding grandma world I need a sicko twist every now and then.

Speaking of grandma world I just stood at the patio door with Tweeters as he sees snow for the first time. Yes, it’s snowing!

I Got My Nook Color!!

And I love it! The colors are fantastic and the magazines I downloaded just pop on the screen. Victoria magazine is glorious! Books are downloaded instantly and you can play with the format to get it just right. Best of all, when I carry that little baby around, I have ( or will have one day) an entire library of books, magazines, children’s books, anything I want to read at any given time!

Yesterday I brought it to work and started reading a short story by Elizabeth Gaskell. It was in a book called Victorian Love Stories about successful marriages. Couldn’t pass that one up! It was a free download like thousands of other books so one does need to spend too much money on getting something good to read. For free I now have Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White  and The Moonstone, several by Elizabeth Gaskell, a couple of Elizabeth Von Armin’s, and some anthologies. I bought a few after checking out the B&N steals and deals. Then I got two at regular price but both were less than a mass market paperback. I have a nice selection right now and will add more as I go.

One of the nurses told me about this free Friday deal where B&N offers a free e-book every Friday. She says they are pretty good. I will check that out as well. This is the cover I chose to go with my Nook. It is very sturdy, love the color, and the inside pockets will be useful.

I’m not much of an app person but it came with several and I got a couple more. The scrabble app was free so that was a no brainer and the other one is called Quell:Reflect.

I don’t care to participate in the Nook verses Kindle debate. After looking at both I liked the Nook better. End of story. I am not threatened if someone prefers Kindle Fire or some other reader and promise to exist harmoniously with those whose choises differ from mine.

One aspect of e-readers that is interesting is how versatile it allows the reader to be. I like anthologies for work or just before going to bed.  The Woman in White can be my work in progress. I can take a break to flip through a magazine with gorgeous pictures. Geoff and I played Scrabble the other night. I love this thing!!

Summing Up 2011 Books – My Favorites

With all that has been going on this year I managed to read 36 books in their entirety. Usually it is about twice as much but my tiny list is here.  Another difference this year is how few I actually reviewed, which is a disappointment, but there just wasn’t time. Several good books were started but put down for one reason or the other. They sit on my nightstand mocking me nightly but I have learned to ignore them. I will add them into my 2012 book list as soon as they are finished. New Years Resolutions would like a review for each book but will stick to a more realistic percentage of say, two thirds, with mentions of the others in Sunday Salon.

Five runners-up for best books of the year:

 

The Sound of Butterflies by Rachael King

Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer

Gentleman and Players by Joanne Harris

Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason

Plainsong by  Kent Haruf

Top five books in no particular order:

 

The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland - Artemisia Gentileschi was a painter in the 1600′s who led a fascinating life after being raped by her painting teacher and almost lost her fingers in the torture that followed. She rubbed shoulders with many interesting characters including Galileo.

Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI - Tired of Pharisees, Puritans, or Patriarchy? How about those who equate faith with dumb yokel ignorance or the oh so tiresome Christian pop psychology? Where is Jesus in all that malarkey? If you guessed nowhere you are absolutely right. I invite you to meet or reacquaint yourself with Jesus. This unforgettable book will sweep away all the bs and allow you a clear, beautifully insightful picture of who He is.

The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman - I love Goodman and her use of atmosphere is like no one else. She highlights her classical education in her stories by her use of Latin, mythology, and fairy tales. The setting for Ghost Orchid is based on a fantasy for me and many other would be writers and artists. Go to a beautiful estate that is dedicated to encouraging these pursuits by giving them a place to work undisturbed for long periods of time. Sit on the veranda and be inspired by the beauty and quiet. But there’s a catch. It’s haunted.

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple - the breakdown of a marriage by an unfaithful husband is usually more of a cliché than a story. But Whipple weaves an unforgettable tale that I couldn’t put down.

I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman – Harper Collins sent me this book to review just out of the blue. It was outstanding. A man’s appeals are up and he is going to be executed for the murders of several girls. How does this affect his only survivor, now years later?

I have a feeling that next year will be an outstanding reading year. I have put my many unread books together and am excited to see so many excellent ones waiting for me. I have also decided to get some sort of reading device such as the Nook. Jim loves his Kindle and wants to upgrade to the Kindle Fire.

I hope everyone has a safe and blessed New Year. Happy reading to all!!

The Passion of Artemisia and Jar City: Rape Through the Ages

“Paint it out of you, carissima.  Paint out the pain until there’s none left.  Don’t take on shame from their mockery.”
 Sister Graziela   (The Passion of Artemisia)

I didn’t intend to read a story about the horrors and aftermath of rape, much less two of them back to back. But the similarities of personal anguish amidst the different settings were so striking that I decided to put these two reviews together. While reading Jar City I began comparing and contrasting the two books in my head. First of all, the genres are different. The Passion of Artemisia is a historical fiction about a real seventeenth century painter while Jar City is a modern Icelandic crime drama. Both came highly recommended, one by a fellow book blogger, one by my hubs. You gotta read this!

The Passion of Artemisia was written by a woman, Jar City by a man. Yet both understood how women are revictimized over and over again through the criminal and justice systems as well as by their own families. None of the rape victims ever saw anything approaching justice their whole lives. Artemisia was raped before her marriage with her husband having full knowledge of what happened. Katrin was married and told her husband forty years later. Both women were abandoned, one by a womanizing husband, the other literally left. Kolbrun never married.

Interesting thing about the so-called criminal justice systems of both times. The men had a front of belief that the woman was the “whore” and “liar”. Both stories featured evidence that was ignored, destroyed, or willfully misinterpreted. Artemsia was tortured to admit her own guilt while the Icelandic Kolbrun was mocked and humiliated. Corrupt men were at the justice helm in both stories. One was in a religious capacity, the other a policeman. It makes me think about the last couple of months in America. Bad, really bad men have some truly great hiding places.

The Passion of Artemisia will top my list of best books of 2011. It is a wonderfully written story about a great painter and woman. Artemisia was a talented, incredibly strong person who did not change her story under torture. I love her for that.  When she was commissioned to paint Lucretia, a woman who committed suicide after being raped, she decided to go in a different direction.

 “This isn’t the Lucretia everyone expects her to be,” Orazio said.  ”I know.  But it’s got to be this way, that she isn’t sure, so people looking at it a long time from now, women and men too, might feel badly, might even weep that at some ignorant time there was once a woman raped who was pressured, even expected, to kill herself.”

If only. Artemisia chose to paint Judith slaying Holofernes several times through the course of her life. In one, her Agostino Tassi’s face was on the head in the basket. It did not please her at all.

I couldn’t make the greenish gray face look like anything other than Agostino’s.  That bothered me. I didn’t want to paint out of hate.

Personally I think putting your rapist’s face on a head in a basket would be rather cathartic. Not Artemisia. She is on a higher plane of moral development. I don’t want to give away the story but her search for forgiveness was ongoing, like the betrayals by those who should have stood by her.

Jar City was also a good read.  The title had an unexpected and disturbing meaning. Definitely not for the squeamish.  Inspector Erlander has his own set of problems, chiefly amongst those a drug addicted, train wreck of a daughter. Unlike Orazio Gentileschi however, he did not abandon his daughter to the bad guys. And that was probably the greatest contrast of the two books.

Sunday Salon – Reading for Fun

Reading for fun, what is that? Now that I finally can sit down and actually do just that, it opens fresh perspectives. Since August I have been wrapped up in getting my med aid license. To those of you who don’t know what a CMA (Certified Medication Aid) does, we are the ones who actually dispense medication to patients. In my case, it will be a nursing/skilled rehab facility. We give standard meds like thyroid, blood pressure, etc, and also narcotics, which must be counted at the beginning of each shift.

The class was basically a crash pharmacology course and very difficult. The background check, as you might guess, was extensive. The whole FBI thing. But my license finally came through a few days ago, yeah!! Now I can get back to my life again!

I grabbed a book from my TBR shelf and inhaled it! How sweet it was to just read! I finished it last night, how refreshing that was. This was my first by Jennifer Egan and I quite enjoyed it. Her storytelling skills are evident throughout and I hope to write a full review on it sometime soon.

On other fronts we are getting ready for Christmas. Jim found a temporary job at UPS for the holidays that hopefully will lead to full-time employment. He has been working part-time for a year now. To be honest it hasn’t been bad. He keeps the house in good order, does the chores, and has been experimenting with pizza dough and just made a fabulous home-made chicken noodle soup. Since we have enough to get by with our jobs, I’m kind of liking having everything done.

This is our little grandson looking at our tree. Everything is so brand new for them! He was enthralled when he saw all the ornaments but all he wanted to do was put them in his mouth. We took him last weekend to get his picture taken with Santa and he did very well.

I started reading The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland after finishing The Keep. It’s quite a bit different than Egan’s gothic crime ghost story. This is a historical fiction of the very real painter Artemisia Gentileschi, the only woman ever to be accepted into the Florence’s prestigious Academia for art. Google her and take a look at her work, her paintings are fantastic! I’ve been wanting the read this for some time now.

Sorry this Sunday Salon was just a mish mash post but I’m trying to bring everything up to the present. Hopefully I’ll have more to say about books next week.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Sunday Salon – Savoring Free Time More

I don’t know whether to describe this year as “the year of change” or “the year of work”. Either one would do. I have never worked so hard or for so many hours amidst the tremendous changes going on within my family. Did I mention my other daughter is pregnant? She joked to her sister that they are thirteen months apart, their babies may be also!

In days past I had huge chunks of free time to spend as I chose. Blogging became very important when I found others who loved to read and discuss what we read as much as I do. Nowadays those chunks of time have dwindled significantly. The economy has claimed another victim as my husband has yet to find full time work. Not that it is a waste because he is putting his skills to use as the editor for the Knight Times for his local Knights of Columbus chapter. He has modernized that old dinosaur of a newsletter and it looks great!! He is much happier now and considering what his old job put him through, it is nice to see.

It may take longer for me to get through a book these days. But in some ways that makes it more enjoyable. For instance I am now reading Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan. It’s tough to put it down for a whole day, or longer. But it also gives me more time to think about the plot, characters, and the fantastic setting of Burma. In the olden days I would have breezed through it and gone quickly on to the next. The buildup is better this way. I haven’t read any reviews because I don’t want to spoil the ending!

I still review the odd book for Librarything Early Reviewers. This month I was delighted to get The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day. She is one of my heroes and I can’t wait to receive it in the mail!

Dorothy Day was co-founder of Catholic Worker movement and has been called one of the most influential people of American Catholicism. She is one of those people who really is the gospel in action. She believed in social justice and the dignity of human work. As you might imagine she got called a Socialist alot. No matter, she didn’t “suffer fools gladly”!

So this is the perfect book for a busy person. It will give me plenty of time in between reading periods for reflection on this extraordinary activist for peace.

I hope everyone has a great reading week!