Teaser Tuesday – The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn and In Triumph’s Wake

Mar 032009

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

Grab your current read.

Let the book fall open to a random page.

Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

Two teasers today, because I couldn’t pick between the books I’m reading:

“He was handsome as a god, made King not long before, still happy with his Spanish bride. They’d come to see his sister off, to make her royal match to doddering old King Louis.”
- The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, by Robin Maxwell, p. 140

“Maria Theresa perceived that Marie Antoinette had lost her youthful air. Clearly the dauphine’s bedeviled life among people who constantly gossiped and intrigued was taking its toll.”
- In Triumph’s Wake: Royal Mothers, Tragic Daughters, and the Price They Paid for Glory, by Julia P. Gelardi, p. 200

The Thirteenth Tale – Book Review

Mar 022009

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

So now I understand why book bloggers and LibraryThingers have just gone on and on about this book. The narrator, Margaret Lea, is a literary-minded young woman biographer who has been enlisted to write the life of the famous story teller Vida Winter. Ms. Winter has previously lied to every biographer she has had, but she promises Margaret she will not do so this time. Between Ms. Winter’s stories and some of her own detective work, Margaret finally gets to the heart of Ms. Winter’s true tale.

This is a book after a book-lover’s heart. Having grown up in a used bookshop, Margaret venerates books, speaking of them with both passion and compassion. Vida Winter too is enamored with the printed word, having, among other things, a number of different copies of Jane Eyre. Don’t think that all “The Thirteenth Tale” has going for it is a love letter to books, though, the story completely drew me in; I could not wait to see how the tale would unravel.

I listened to the audio version of this book and that was a wonderful experience for me. Although I think it is harder for me to initially get into an audiobook (the printed words say ‘story!’ more to me than does a voice on my Ipod), this one was quite well done, the readers were absolutely phenomenal.

This is a definite recommendation for just about anyone. The story is fantastic and the audio will make a commute or a long trip simply fly by.

Buy this book from Amazon.

Buy this audiobook from Amazon.

The Sunday Salon – This Week in Links

Mar 012009

Below are some of the interesting links from book blogs this past week:

Discussions

Amy started an interesting discussion about the ettiquette of attending an author’s book signing. Do you need to buy a book or can you take books you already have?

What’s the most horrific way you’ve ever ruined a book? Natasha asked this question after inadvertantly ruining an ARC. Evidently a lot of us have completely ruined books, because Natasha has gotten a LOT of answers.

Book Reviews

Beth reviewed “Igraine the Brave” this week and it sounds like a really fantastic book for late-elementary and middle school girls. On a somewhat but not really related topic, Tracy reviewed “My Little Red Book,” a collection of stories about women and their first periods.

Shelly has me coveting a what looks like a great picture book, “A Carousel Tale,” that looks like it has gorgeous illustrations.

Wendi reviewed “Silent on the Moor,” a book I’ve been avoiding. The cover had me worrying about how good it would actually be but, according to Wendi, “Silent on the Moor” has a great story line and well-written characters.

Other Cool Things

Nicki of Fyrefly’s Book Blog recently created a search engine just for some book blogs so that she can easily find reviews other bloggers have done of the books she is reviewing. Plus, she has been kind enough to share it with us.