Incognito by Gregory Murphy – Book Review

Jul 132011

Incognito by Gregory Murphy
Published by Berkley Trade, an imprint of Penguin

The Gilded Age was a time of big personalities and incredibly powerful people. Lawyer William Dysart is working for just one such person: Lydia Billings, widow of an extremely wealthy Wall Street financier. She wants a piece of property the abuts her own, owned by a single woman. Surely this is a simple task for a well-connected society lawyer, nothing more than talking an older woman into selling her land, making her realize that Lydia Billings will obtain it one way or another. What William finds, though, is not an old farmer’s wife, but a smart, loevly young woman name Sybil Curtis, and Sybil is not selling for anything. Coming at a time when he is growing increasingly disenchanged with his gorgeous but cruel and grasping wife, William quickly becomes enchanted with Sybil, unable to forget about her. Now William must decide what he wants from life, as well as satisfy his curiousity as to what the true history is between Sybil and Lydia.

Incognito is a very engaging book with a fascinating historical setting, always easy to pick up. Unfortunately, it was also relatively easy to put down; the characters, from William Dysart right down to the most bit player, were interesting, but shallowly drawn. Additionally, It is billed as a Gilded Age mystery, but nothing about it is particularly mysterious. Certainly, the question of the relationship between Lydia Billings and Sybil Curtis is an interesting one, but not a driving enough part of the story to consider it the central mystery of the book. The characters, from William Dysart right down to the most bit player, were interesting, but shallowly drawn. Finally, the Gilded Age setting seems almost incidental to the plot itself, lacking the real force of compelling place and time-based historical fiction.

All that being said, for all its faults, Incognito really was an absorbingly diverting book, and worthwhile if you’re looking for a Gilded Age beach read.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The White Devil by Justin Evans – Book Review

Jul 122011

The White Devil by Justin Evans
Published by Harper Books, an imprint of HarperCollins

Andrew Taylor is on his last chance. After getting in trouble time and time again back at home, Andrew has been shipped overseas to Harrow School in London, with the promise that if he steps out of line again, he will be disowned. It becomes obvious very quickly that Andrew can’t escape trouble, when students begin dying and getting desperately ill. Somehow this is all linked to Andrew, and the fact that he is a spitting image of the school’s most famous student – Lord Byron. Suddenly Andrew must court the very trouble he was hoping to avoid to solve the mystery of Lord Byron’s past and figure out how to save his own life in the present.

Evans has written a spooky and engaging story. The way he melds Byron’s story with Andrew’s is smooth and effortless, bringing the past into the present in a truly horrifying way. I love the idea that it is only by solving the mysteries of history that Andrew can save himself, it brings to life the ways in which the past influences our lives today – even if the past is not typically so visceral, in more ways than one. Byron is not a literary figure I know much about, but The White Devil inspired me to learn more about him and even try his work (although I only made it about a page into Childe Harold when I did try).

Any book that can alternately terrify me and interest me in literary history is a winner no matter how you slice it. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

August BOOK CLUB giveaway – By Nightfall

Jul 112011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture It is that time again! We are gearing up for this month’s discussion of The Reservoir by John M. Thompson (Tuesday, July 26 right here), but it is also time to give away next month’s BOOK CLUB selection. In August we will be reading another offering from Picador, By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham.

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We will be discussing By Nightfall on Tuesday, August 23th on Nicole’s blog.

From the publisher:

Peter and Rebecca Harris, midforties, are prosperous denizens of Manhattan. He’s an art dealer, she’s an editor. They live well. They have their troubles—their ebbing passions, their wayward daughter, and certain doubts about their careers—but they feel as though they’re happy. Happy enough. Until Rebecca’s much younger, look-alike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, short for the Mistake), comes to visit. And after he arrives, nothing will ever be the same again.

This poetic and compelling masterpiece is a heartbreaking look at a marriage and the way we now live. Full of shocks and aftershocks, By Nightfall is a novel about the uses and meaning of beauty, and the place of love in our lives.

If you would like to be considered as a participant for August, please fill out the form below by the end of the day Wednesday, July 13. Your mailing address will be discarded if you aren’t selected to participate and used to mail you the book if you are. I do not share or retain any personal information. Only those selected will be contacted by email.

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Sarah’s Key – Upcoming Film & Giveaway

Jul 112011

sarahs key picture Nearly three years ago I reviewed a very interesting piece of dual time period modern day/WWII historical fiction called Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Overall I enjoyed it, although I was a bit put off by some of the modern storyline, it was a bit fluffy at times and felt incongruous with the historical storyline. The historical storyline, however, I found completely poignant and heartbreaking, I still catch myself thinking about it from time to time.

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Now Sarah’s Key is going to be a movie starring Kristin Scott Thomas (website | trailer). It follows American journalist Julia Jarmond whose article for a piece on the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup in 1942 in France completely upends her entire world. I’m not even going to tell you about the historical part of the storyline, because I think it is best if you experience the specifics for yourself, if they are anything like the book (which they appear to be). I predict lots and lots of crying. I’m very interested to see what they do with this adaptation, if perhaps the chick lit feel of the modern day storyline will be toned down a little, which I think would only improve the story as a whole.

The movie studio producing Sarah’s Key, The Weinstein Company (twitter | facebook), is offering one lucky reader a copy of the novel as well as a movie poster. This giveaway is open internationally. Please enter on the form below by 11:59 pm on Thursday, July 21st.

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TSS – July 10, 2011

Jul 102011

So we’re basically just having a great week+ here. The weather has (finally) been gorgeous, hubby started a new job that he’s really excited about, and Daniel got to spend lots of time with various grandparents, including a day and 1/2 while hubby and I took a trip downtown to celebrate our upcoming anniversary.

This week Nicole and I also posted a new episode of our podcast, What’s Old is New. Check back there next week for a Season 1 wrap up and a sneak preview of what will be coming up next season.

My reading week was higher in quality than quantity, but it was a good one nonetheless. I’ve still got a couple of good books going, too, and more good stuff coming up.

embassytown picture joyforbeginners picture domesticviolets picture

I also reviewed some good stuff this week:

Here’s to another great week!

Melvin and the Boy – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jul 092011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Melvin and the Boy by Lauren Castillo
Published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Macmillan

When a child – or anyone, really – wants something, sometimes it seems as if they are the only one around without that thing they want. In the case of the protagonist of Melvin and the Boy, the desired object is a pet. It seems like everyone besides our unnamed narrator has one: dogs, cats, rabbits, anything and everything. The main character isn’t terribly concerned about what kind of pet he gets, but his parents turn down all sorts of things as too noisy, too much work, too big. When he finds a turtle at the park, one he names Melvin, none of their usual objections apply, but can a wild turtle be happy as a pet?

If for no other reason, Melvin and the Boy is worth picking up for the beautiful illustrations. Every picture is just beautiful and charming, with fabulous contrast between bright and subdued colors. There is so much to look at on every page that the squirmiest toddler is sure to focus, and yet Castillo manages not to go too far in the other direction and make the illustrations too busy, they are just wonderfully nuanced.

In addition to the beautiful illustrations, there is also an important message in Melvin and the Boy about letting wild creatures stay wild. Melvin is unhappy living in an apartment where the only thing that feels vaguely familiar is the bath tub. There is also a bonus for older children at the end of the story, a full page spread of very interesting turtle facts. Daniel is a little young for that part, but he loves the rest of the book and, quite frankly, I have spent some time reading the turtle facts myself, as they are really quite interesting. Did you know that turtles have excellent eyesight?

Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett – Audiobook Review

Jul 082011

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, narrated by Hope Davis
Published in audio by Harper Audio, published in print by Harper Books, both imprints of HarperCollins

Synopsis:

The letter changes everything. The letter that says that Anders is dead, that his body is buried in the rainforest of Brazil. Anders was Marina’s lab partner, someone she had come to work with day in and day out for years, and now he is dead, and there is nothing left except a letter from Annick Swenson, the woman he went into the rainforest to find. Now everyone wants answers: Marina’s employer Vogel wants to know the status of the drug on which Annick is working, something she is very secretive about, and Anders’ wife Karen wants to know what happened and how he died. Somehow, it is Marina who becomes tasked with finding these answers, Marina heading down into the jungle to find Annick Swenson, her former teacher who presided over one of the worst days in Marina’s life, and Anders’ story.

Thoughts on the story:

Here’s the part where I admit to you that I’ve never read Ann Patchett before.

Go ahead, throw eggs and/or gasp in astonishment, I’ll wait.

I can see from State of Wonder why she is an author people so greatly admire. The writing is lush and full, absolutely beautiful and transporting – if you are never going to make it into the rainforest, here’s one possible substitute. Perhaps the hot, humid Chicago summer helped, but I did feel myself suddenly in the jungles of Brazil due to Patchett’s lyric descriptions and eye for detail. There were some parts of the story that seemed farfetched and too coincidental, but I was already so drawn in by the writing and Marina’s character development that they didn’t bother me, when I even noticed them.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Hope Davis did a fabulous job narrating State of Wonder. I must admit, I was initially a bit wary; her narration of the opening interactions between Marina and Anders in the lab was slightly awkward and did not bode well. However, she quickly gained her ground and sucked me straight into Patchett’s story. She was able to narrate everything from fever dreams to irate professors with equal ease and in an equally convincing way.

soundbytes picture Overall:

Hope Davis’s narration was a perfect complement to Ann Patchett’s beautiful writing and added something extra to an already engrossing book. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch – Book Review

Jul 072011

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch
Published by Harper Books, an imprint of HarperCollins

When Nina Sankovitch’s sister died of a quickly killing cancer at the age of 46, Nina was heartbroken. Unable to figure out how life without Anne-Marie could even continue to go on, Nina was in a serious funk; certainly she was still functioning, but the day-to-day living was largely without joy, and the reality of grief was wearing Nina down, bit by bit. Finally, Nina realized she had to do something to take back her life, not to forget Anne-Marie, but to make peace with her passing, to escape the grief. It was then that she decided on a year of reading.

Books. The more I thought about how to stop and get myself back together as one sane, whole person, the more I thought about books. I thought about escape. Not running to escape, but reading to escape. –p. 20

And so Nina decided that her job, for one year of her own life, would be simply to read. She was going to read one book per day, and begin every morning by writing a review of the previous day’s book on her website, ReadAllDay.org. Along the way, she began to be revived by her time with books, a passion which she and Anne-Marie had always shared.

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is an absolutely lovely account of the healing power of literature, of the power that books new and old have to speak to our lives today. That said, it had the potential to go very wrong, a book about all the books one person read in a year could easily be banal, a series of “and then I read… and it was….” Sankovitch managed to take the books she read and the lessons learned from them, though, and weave them together with the year of her life as well as some family history to create a cohesive and compelling narrative with many quotable lines about the power inherent in books.

Similarly risky was the structuring of the narrative with Anne-Marie’s death at the beginning. The reader does not know either Nina or Anne-Marie when their story starts, and so the grief of Anne-Marie’s passing could have fallen flat, been simply an uncomfortable truth. Instead, Nina draws the reader immediately into her family and her own feelings, to the point where you would be better off not starting this book in a public place (I nearly cried in Chipotle).

A story of individual growth and rediscovery, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair manages to avoid the trap of becoming maudlin and ridiculous as so many in that genre fall into, and instead has a note of universality for readers. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher for an episode of What’s Old is New.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Books Can Be Deceiving by Jenn McKinlay – Book Review

Jul 062011

Books Can Be Deceiving by Jenn McKinlay
Published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin

This is the first book in the new Library Lover’s Mysteries series.

Lindsay always imagined that she would use her Library Science degree in a large and prestigious academic library, but things don’t always go as you plan, and she now finds herself as the new library director in the small town of Briar Creek. At least her best friend Beth is in Briar Creek as well, and even works at Lindsay’s library as the phenomenal children’s librarian. Lindsay may not have Beth around for long, however, because she has been accused first of plagiarizing the work of her boyfriend, a famous children’s author, but also of his murder after their public – and loud – breakup. Now Lindsay must fight to save her friend and find the real murderer, before it is too late.

A cozy mystery set anywhere around books is always something I am going to want to check out, and Books Can Be Deceiving sounded just perfect. What reader, after all, can resist crimes set in a library?

Books Can Be Deceiving, though, did not get off to the best start. Something about the opening couple of chapters was slightly awkward and not particularly engaging. I am used to Julie Hyzy’s cozies that suck the reader in from page one, and Books Can Be Deceiving did not accomplish that. One thing that kept pulling me out of the book was the fact that the Briar Creek Public Library book club was reading The Last Time I Saw Paris, a book also out from Berkley released only two months earlier. This would be unlikely to bother most readers, but I kept wondering about Jenn McKinlay and Lynne Sheene, wondering if they are friends, do they have the same agent, same editor, etc? It just distracted me and certainly did not help me with my already rocky immersion into the story.

Still, by the time the dead body was found, McKinlay had me. The writing gained confidence and became increasingly interesting as the story progressed, and by the end I was completely enthralled. Despite the less than stellar start, I can honestly say I am looking forward to the next book in this series.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

For the King by Catherine Delors – giveaway

Jul 052011

fortheking picture Just in time for Bastille Day, Catherine Delors’ story of post-Revolutionary France, For the King is coming to paperback. As you may remember from last summer, I loved For the King, so I am thrilled to be able to offer two copies for giveaway to readers with US addresses, courtesy of Penguin.

If you want to know more about the history behind For the King, please check out the guest post that Catherine Delors wrote about the revolutionary group depicted in her book: “The Chouans and the Downfall of Napoleon.”

To enter, please fill out the form below by Sunday, July 10th at 11:59pm Central.

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Older Entries Newer Entries

Devourer of Books

Incognito by Gregory Murphy – Book Review

The White Devil by Justin Evans – Book Review

August BOOK CLUB giveaway – By Nightfall

Sarah’s Key – Upcoming Film & Giveaway

TSS – July 10, 2011

Melvin and the Boy – Saturday Story Spotlight

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett – Audiobook Review

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch – Book Review

Books Can Be Deceiving by Jenn McKinlay – Book Review

For the King by Catherine Delors – giveaway

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