Devourer of Books

Hope you have all had a great week – I know I have! Here are some of the posts that have entertained me this week:

About Books:

Beth reviewed “This One Is Mine” this week.  It sounds like a fabulous book.  Normally a book about two women living in Hollywood wouldn’t really appeal to me, but when Beth talked about the complexities of the women’s stories and motivations, she convinced me.  She also gave us a peek at her Mount TBR this morning and asked if anyone recommends any of the books or has any that they really want her to get to reviewing.

Are you interested in books that show you slices of life?  Nicole just reviewed “Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans” which follows nine people between the two major hurricanes that hit the city.  

Shelly has been blogging all week about Children’s Book Week.  Head on over to check out her reviews, interviews, and giveaways.

Carrie is continuing with her favorites in the genre series, and this week she has some great history books on show.

Book Blog Community:

Amy, Michele, and Meghan have started a great new community building initiative – The Book Blog Social Club.  This site is available for anyone to use to celebrate life events, you just need to contact one of the founders to schedule it.  For the inaugural event, Amy, Michele, and Meghan are throwing a baby shower – for me!  Stop by and check it out.

Giveaways:

Julie has two Advance Reader’s Copies of “The Chosen One” to giveaway.  This book is supposed to be terrific!

Ali has five copies of each of three very interesting-sounding parenting books to giveaway.  Check them out!

Palace Circle by Rebecca Dean

In the early part of the 20th century, there was a lovely young girl in Virginia who was courted by British nobility.  Convinced she loved Ivor, Delia agreed to marry him and traveled with him to England, only to find that he married her only because he found her pleasant enough and wanted an heir – something that was not provided to him by his first wife – and that he was deeply in love with the wife of a friend.

“Palace Circle” is primarily set in the lead up to World War II through the first part of the war, first in London, then in Cairo.  The story is told with a series of third person limited omniscient narrators.  Luckily the point of view does not jump around from chapter to chapter, or even within chapters, but goes through five chronological sections, beginning with Delia, followed by each of her two daughters as well as two young men.  The plot revolves around Delia’s family, high society life, and life in British-occupied Egypt.  There wasn’t necessarily a grand sweeping narrative, it was more the somewhat romantic (but thankfully no blantent sex scenes) story of a family navigating these different settings.

You cannot hear slightest mention of this book without hearing the statement by Nora Robers that “If you like Philippa Gregory, you will love this book!”  Honestly, I requested this from LibraryThing Early Reviewers in spite of this statement, because I’m iffy on Gregory and have no interest in Roberts whatsoever, so wasn’t crazy about the fact that she’s so prominently displayed on the cover.  A slightly more accurate statement would probably have been that if you like Gregory you will like this book.  I could definitely see the comparison, although thankfully Dean didn’t feel Gregory’s need to include the actual sex scenes.  “Palace Circle” was like some of Gregory’s ‘okay, not great’ writing.  It wasn’t super engaging like “The Other Boleyn Girl” or maddening and boring like “The Other Queen.”  Instead it was fairly interesting and kept me reading like “The Boleyn Inheritence.”

In my opinion, this is fairly representative of the ‘fluffy’ part of the historical fiction genre.  I was entertained, but not super engaged.  I didn’t feel that I learned much, which was a bit disappointing, but I never wished I could just finish already and read something else either.  It was probably lucky that I read some fairly negative reviews for this book before I started it, because I initially had high expectations and those reviews tempered them greatly.  If I had expected great things from this book I’d be sorely disappointed, but I expected (at most) a decent read, so I was pleased.  I wouldn’t go searching out any of Dean’s other work, but I would read it if it was around.

If you feel like a fluffy read, go ahead and give this a try, but don’t expect much depth.

Buy this book from:
Powell’s.
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.
Amazon.

Book Gluttony! Are your eyes bigger than your book belly? Do you have a habit of buying up books far quicker than you could possibly read them? Have you had to curb your book buying habits until you can catch up with yourself? Or are you a controlled buyer, only purchasing books when you have run out of things to read?

Oh man.  If book gluttony is a sin I’m in BIG trouble.  I mean, come on.  Let’s just look at last week’s Library Loot post as one example.  I go to the library every week to pick up my holds that have come in, because I just actually have holds come in that often.  Even with going every week, I still checked out ELEVEN books (plus 5 dvds).  Now, please don’t think that all my reading comes from the library.  I have an extremely healthy review pile for the next month, one I’m just barely able to keep up with when adding the occasional library book in.  Not to mention the fact that a full half of all the books in my house are TBR, most of which were accumulated in the last 18 months.

I wasn’t always such a glutton.  When I was more on my own, with some friends that were readers but none that read as much as I did, I really didn’t buy much at all.  Sure, if I went into Border’s I’d hit the 3 for the price of 2 table, but then I’d be done.  I didn’t have constant recommendations coming at me all the time, so it was easy to keep up with what I wanted and read what I bought.  Then I discovered LibraryThing and book blogs, and the whole thing went to hell in a handbasket.  It was just a couple short years ago that I had two not-so-large bookcases, upon which all my books basically fit.  When my husband and I combined households he had two more, with lots of decorations on them as he didn’t have a ton of books.  There are no longer decoration shelves in the bookcases, and they are all doubled shelved, some with stacks of books sitting on top or in front of the other books on the shelf.  Even with the 2 new bookshelves we’re planning to get, I haev no idea where all these books are supposed to go when we add in the baby’s book as well.

Hi.  My name is Jen, and I’m a book addict.  Sometimes I wish I would stop accumulating new books so that I could read the ones I already have but, who are we kidding?  I don’t want to stop.

The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire by C.M. Mayo

Although I generally don’t like to simply give a publisher’s summary, I think there is too much going on in this book for me to write my own – you’d all stop reading before I actually got to what I thought about the book (trust me, I tried explaining it to my husband a few days ago and completely confused him):

“The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is a sweeping historical novel of Mexico during the short, tragic, at times surreal, reign of Emperor Maximilian and his court. Even as the American Civil War raged north of the border, a clique of Mexican conservative exiles and clergy convinced Louis Napoleon to invade Mexico and install the Archduke of Austria, Maximilian von Habsburg, as Emperor. A year later, the childless Maximilian took custody of the two year old, half-American, Prince Agustín de Iturbide y Green, making the toddler the Heir Presumptive. Maximilian’s reluctance to return the child to his distraught parents, even as his empire began to fall, and the Empress Carlota descended into madness, ignited an international scandal. This lush, grand read is based on the true story and illuminates both the cultural roots of Mexico and the political development of the Americas.”

I was super excited when I first heard about this book, because Mexican history is an area where I am shamefully weak.  I realized in college my disgraceful lack of knowledge about Central and South American history and worked somewhat to mitigate that – I took about 1/4 of my courses for my history major on Central and/or South American history.  However, since Mexico is NORTH America, I didn’t really learn anything about it.  In my (possible?) defense, though, I don’t know much about Canadian history either, so I’m not just singling out Mexico.

In any case, I was thrilled to read about Mexican history, particularly such a dramatic period in Mexican history, about which I had never heard.  I knew the French conquered Mexico in the 19th century, but I had no idea that they installed a Hapsburg as emperor and even less of a clue that Maximillian declared a half-Mexican, half-American toddler, grandson of a former Emperor of Mexico, as his heir.

“The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire” had a lot going for it: a fascinating history and and an author who is a skilled writer.  However, in this case at least, I felt that Mayo’s storytelling skills were not on par with her lovely writing skills.  My biggest complaint is probably that far too many characters were given narration privileges, including characters who had only a passing role in the book, such as Agustin’s first nanny during his time with Maximillian.  This reliance on SO many characters really fractured the story for me, making it difficult for me to relate to any of them in any way and thus keeping me from maintaining a steady interest in the book.  It also seemed to me that this multi-character approach kept the characters from being particularly well-developed.  For example, I really did not understand why Agustin’s mother Alicia was happy to let him go, then suddenly wanted him back.  I know what other characters surmised about it and what she stated to others, but I couldn’t tell if what she said was true to her motivation or simply what she was telling people in her quest to retrieve her son.

I had a really difficult time staying with this book.  At just over 400 pages, it took me 8 days to finish, largely because I started 5 other books (and finished 4 of them) while I was reading because “The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire” simply couldn’t keep my attention for 100+ pages a day.  Personally I think I would have preferred this book as nonfiction.  It would have been more successful in fiction, in my opinion, if it was either half as long (with MUCH less complexity) or twice as long if Mayo wanted to fit everything she learned about this time period into the book in a less crunched fashion.

Although this really wasn’t a page turner, I don’t regret reading it because of what I learned.  If you are very interested in this topic, I would definitely consider picking this book up.  If not, it probably isn’t for you.  Mayo does have some lovely descriptions and lyrical writing, though, so I would definitely at least consider reading any future books, I just think her storytelling style needs a bit of work.

Buy this book from:
Powell’s.
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.
Amazon.

Every Last Cuckoo by Kate Maloy

Sarah and Charles Lucas have been married for somewhere around 50 years when he died unexpectedly.  Although their marriage had its rough patches, it was by and large a happy one.

“Every Last Cuckoo” is a story of family and of finding your purpose in life.  Although we know early on that Charles is going to die, the first half of the story goest back and forth between the period leading up to Charles’ death and the day of the event itself.  The Lucases have a very normal family: nobody is having an out and out feud, but different children are closer to and more comfortable with different parents, there are some strained relationships, and everyone generally wants the best for everyone else.  They all gather together for holidays, but don’t always have the smoothest gatherings.

When Charles passes away, Sarah has to learn to live without him both with the help of and in spite of her family.  She falls, not completely of her own volition, into relationships with a variety of different people, all of whom show her that life is indeed worth living, even without her husband of so many years.

I really enjoyed this book.  It was a read I just fell into.  The best phrase I can use to describe “Every Last Cuckoo” is ‘comfortable,’ as ridiculous as it may sound, the book was a like a cozy old sweater.  When I read the plot synopsis on the back of the book I was a bit afraid that the situations through which Sarah was going to end up in relationship with all of these people after Charles’ death would be contrived and silly, that she would come out seeming like some old hippy at a commune.  Luckily that was not the case.  Each of these relationships seemed to come about naturally, I never felt as if the author was intervening to MAKE anything happen, it simply felt like she was relating a story that happened in the way that it had to happen.  When you consider that I am at the opposite end of life as Sarah – newly married with a first baby on the way to her 50 or so years of marriage and nearly-grown grandchildren – it is amazing how connected to her character I was.

Maloy has a lot of talent and has written a wonderful little novel.  I definitely recommend this one.  It also might make a good book for book clubs.

Buy this book from:
Powell’s.
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.
Amazon.