Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant – Book Review

Oct 312011

Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant
Published by W.W. Norton & Co

Israel provides the backdrop for Joan Leegant’s Wherever You Go. Her three main character – Yona, Mark Greenglass, and Aaron – find themselves there for reasons as varied as reconciliation attempts, the fleeting saving power of religion, and an attempt to finally excel at something in life. Although they have very different relationships with both Israel and Judaism, they find themselves in situations which bring them closer and closer to one another in an event that will drastically change all of their lives.

Leegant’s command of her prose is masterful. She creates a vivid picture of her characters and the landscape that surrounds them. Particularly impressive is the way she uses her prose style to build anticipation leading up to the climax. Each of the three main characters alternates chapters; the first three chapters, which introduce the protagonists, span some 60 pages. By contrast, the last three chapters of the first part, at the high point of the action, cover only 10 pages, the majority of that being the final chapter. The downwards creep in chapter length is subtle, but incredibly effective, all but forcing the reader to turn the pages faster. At the same time, though, Leegant doesn’t resort to cheap, manipulative tactics such as manufactured cliff hangers at the end of chapters. The tension she creates is authentic, based on her skill both in the craft of writing and in creating realistic characters in whom the reader can invest a great deal.

Being Jewish is by no means a prerequisite for enjoying and becoming invested in Wherever You Go. Leegant’s characters may be Jewish, but her themes of estrangement, reconciliation, and crisis of identity are universal. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Author.

* 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.

TSS: Home Sweet Home

Oct 302011

For the first time all month, we are all at home for the weekend, and we have no plans in particular (other than taking a certain little dinosaur trick or treating). Not only that, my husband will actually NOT be traveling at all in the next week, I’m not sure we’ll all know what to do with ourselves. I have lots of cleaning and review writing on my scheduled – you don’t even want to know how far behind I am on posts, especially considering I was completely caught up at the end of September.

Of course, it sort of makes sense how far I am behind when you see how much I’ve been reading, an ereader sure makes it easier to read while traveling with a toddler, much easier to find my place every time he was distracted for a few minutes. Here’s what I finished last week, primarily all as ebooks:

murderatthevicarage picture youaremyonly picture thebrokenteaglass picture whyreadmoby dick picture

Lots of dark colors again, a second week in a row, interesting. No real pattern in the covers of books reviewed this week, the only similarity is that all of these books were good!

Where is Baby’s Pumpkin? – Saturday Story Spotlight

Oct 292011

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.

Where Is Baby’s Pumpkin? by Karen Katz
Published by Little Simon, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

I know I’ve said it before, but we love Karen Katz. It is pretty impressive, actually, how she manages to basically write the same book over and over and keep it interesting. In Where is Baby’s Pumpkin?, baby is looking everywhere for her pumpkin, but it isn’t in the closet or under the bed. Instead, she finds all sorts of fun Halloween stuff.

Honestly, when you’ve discussed one Karen Katz book you’ve basically discussed them all, but they’ve continued to be popular in our house over the last year and 1/2, so I recommend them for families of small children.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy
* 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 Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh – Audiobook Review

Oct 282011

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, narrated by Tara Sands
Published in audio by Random House Audio, published in print by Ballantine Books

Synopsis:

Abandoned at birth, Victoria Jones has been a ward of the State of California her entire life. She has, of necessity, learned to be hard and guarded, expressing her feelings – typically of hate and misanthropy – through the Victorian language of flowers, taught to her by Elizabeth, the one women who was nearer than anyone else to being her mother. Now that she has aged out of her last group home, Victoria must learn to live life on her own. She finds she can make a living arranging flowers; her bouquets are imbued with meaning as she chooses flowers based on the hopes each customer has for the effect of the arrangement. Just when she thinks she is gaining stability, however, she is forced to both let down her guard, and remember in excruciating detail what went wrong in her life with Elizabeth.

Thoughts on the story:

Vanessa Diffenbaum has created in The Language of Flowers a beautiful and moving story that nearly gave me a heart attack more than once. Victoria is a worrying character, initially, seeming very hard and closed off, but it is not long before the reader is sucked into her life, experiencing her 18 years of pain, and the slim hope that she has for the future. Her growth is really, it happens organically and, although it experiences setbacks, it produces beautiful results. The language of flowers is woven perfectly into the story, enhancing both plot and character development, and giving the book an extra something special to really set it apart.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Narrator Tara Sands was perfect for this part. For one thing, she sounded age appropriate for Victoria, which is always something that worries me in audiobooks with young protagonists. More importantly, however, she was able to capture the contradictions in Victoria’s character, the fragility under her crusty veneer. For more information on the audio, please see my review for Audiofile Magazine.

soundbytes picture Overall:

This was a beautiful book and an lovely audio production. Enjoy it in print or in audio! Highly 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: Audiofile.
* 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 Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad – Book Review

Oct 272011

The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad
Published by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin

In the tribal area between Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, marital fidelity is highly prized, especially in women. When a man and a woman show up at a remote outpost clearly on the run from an angry father or husband they are granted permission to live there for a time, but also told they will be given no protection if a time comes when such protection would be necessary. It is their son who will become Tor Baz, the eponymous “Wandering Falcon.” Tor Baz’s wanderings through this foreboding borderland become the basis for exploring a number of stories of those in the tribal lands.

The Wandering Falcon is a unique book, it would perhaps best be described as a book of linked stories, but unlike other books of linked stories, such as A Visit From the Goon Squad, there is a single character in The Wandering Falcon whose life and exploits tie together the disparate stories in what seems to be chronological order. In this case the form works extremely well by giving a flavor of the variety of experiences in these tribal lands while still having a single unifying thread to keep the reader engaged. Interestingly, Tor Baz’s importance varies from story to story; at times he is so minor that he could almost be missed, at others he is an integral part of the story being told.

Ahmad is uniquely qualified to write a book like The Wandering Falcon. He has worked for many years for the government of Pakistan, mostly in areas of frontier management. The language of The Wandering Falcon is beautiful, particularly for the heart and humanity so evident in the stories being told. 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.

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind by Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr. – Book Review

Oct 262011

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood by Ellen F Brown and John Wiley, Jr.
Published by Taylor Trade

In 1935, Margaret Mitchell had a manuscript. By 1940, her book had sold well over a million copies and the movie based on it became the first film ever to gross one million dollars in a single week. Over the next 20 years, Macmillan continually received fan mail for Gone With the Wind, an average of ninety letters a month. By 2010, more than thirty million copies of Gone With the Wind had been printed world-wide. How, though, did this happen? Luck, hard work, or some combination thereof?

This is the question that Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind aims to answer. It is not a biography of Margaret Mitchell herself, but of her epic work of historical fiction. The story is a surprisingly fascinating one. In many ways, Margaret Mitchell and her husband John Marsh blazed a trail for many future American authors, particularly in the realms of overseas rights. As Brown and Wiley make clear, the story of Gone With the Wind‘s success is the story of Marsh and Mitchell’s tireless work. It would have been easy for everyone but Mitchell to make money from Gone With the Wind, but she and her husband made sure that did not happen.

People with interest in Gone With the Wind and the publishing business in general will find much to fascinate in this captivating history of the Gone With the Wind empire. 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.

The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer – Book Review

Oct 252011

The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer
Published by Picador, an imprint of Macmillan

When art critic Daniel Lichtmann’s wife is found dead next to the equally lifeless body of an artist – one with whom Daniel had a somewhat antagonistic relationship, no less – it seems that Daniel’s life, too, is over. Depressed at the thought that Aleksandra, who was actually Daniel’s second wife, had had such an intimate affair with Benjamin Wind that she even died with him in a supposed suicide, Daniel is all but unable to function, and seems on the verge of losing his job. One might think that Daniel would at least be glad that Benjamin, the man who stole his wife, is dead or, if he is upset, that he might be upset at his inability to take his own revenge. Instead, Daniel almost mourns for the man as he does for his wife. It is lucky that he does so, though, because at Benjamin’s funeral Daniel meets a man claiming to be Benjamin’s grandfather. This man, Max, turns on its head everything that Daniel thought he knew about Benjamin and his relationship with Aleksandra by introducing Daniel to the secret past of Benjamin’s family.

To be completely honest, I was a bit concerned starting The Marriage Artist. Suicide, lust, and infidelity in the art world just didn’t seem like an appealing premise at the time I picked it up, but I also couldn’t put it off because the BOOK CLUB discussion was looming. What I found, though, was a haunting story of love, marriage, and the ever-present influence of the past. Daniel’s story is told in parallel with that of Josef Pick, a Viennese Jew whose story begins in the years before World War II, and who is famous for his creation of marriage contracts. Either of the stories might have been overwhelming on their own, for both are filled with longing and heartbreak, but the way they are woven together prevents either one from becoming overly depressing and builds anticipation for both stories.

The Marriage Artist is a masterful example of a dual time period narrative. The stories work together beautifully, each enhancing the other. In addition, Winer takes what could have been a depressing or unappealing story and set of characters, and works them together in such a way that they hold the reader’s interest with ease. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher for BOOK CLUB.
* 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.

Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman – Book Review

Oct 242011

Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman
Published by Putnam Books, an imprint of Penguin

This is the fourth book in the Devil’s Brood series. This review does not contain spoilers for the previous book, beyond the actual history. I have previously reviewed the third book, The Devil’s Brood.

In her latest work of epic historical fiction, Lionheart, Sharon Kay Penman explores the reign of Richard I, Richard Coeur de Lion. In particular, Penman focuses on Richard as Crusader-King.

Penman is a true master of historical fiction. There is a lot of repetition in the story of the Third Crusade, falling back, advancing, gaining cities and losing them again, Richard riding out with seeming disregard for his personal safety. And yet, Lionheart is a book I didn’t want to stop reading, despite its being 600 pages long. Penman’s strength is in bringing her historical characters vividly to life, without changing their stories or personalities for dramatic effect.

Part of what makes Lionheart so compelling is Penman’s narrator, using the third personal intimate voice, switching not only between Richard and some of his men, but also between his sister Joanna and his wife Berengaria. The women and their retinue – unconventionally following the men on the Crusade, as did Joanna and Richard’s mother Eleanor when she was married to the French king – lent some relief what might have otherwise been a bleak and seemingly endless campaign, bringing humanity to the proceedings in Richard’s camp.

Lionheart is another extremely strong showing from Sharon Kay Penman, and a fascinating look at Richard the Lionheart, Crusader King. The only real negative to reading something by Penman is that it reminds you that she has so many other fabulous (but long!) books that you haven’t read it, thereby stalling your entire TBR list. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
* 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.

Sunday Salon: Portland

Oct 232011

Hello friends! Today’s post is going to be intentionally vague, because instead of writing it on Sunday like usual (okay, Saturday, I’m a compulsive post scheduler) I’m writing it on Wednesday. Why, might you ask, am I doing this? Why, because I’m currently in Portland, OR and as much as I love you all I get to “talk” to you all the time and if I’ve ever been to Portland I was in about 5th grade, and I’m visiting a college roommate I haven’t seen in over two years and her adorable new baby. So…yeah. Writing this on Wednesday and wishing you the best, and probably playing with a cute baby or visiting Powells or something as you read this. Plus, all of you who are bloggers have a reading hangover from yesterday’s Readathon, so you are likely not reading this in the first place.

Here’s what I read this week (or, what I anticipated on Wednesday I would have finished by this point… is this getting confusing yet?):

populazzi picture scrapbookoffrankiepratt picture marriageartist picture wanderingfalcon picture

What’s with all of the yellows up there? Anyway, if I did happen to finish anything else, I guess I’ll just throw it on next Sunday’s post. At least I know for sure what I reviewed this week, because as I’m writing this I’ve already scheduled everything (lots of red and black/grey this week, funny!):

Hope you’re all having a wonderful Sunday!

Halloween Dogs – Saturday Story Spotlight

Oct 222011

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.

Halloween Dogs by Roger Priddy
Published by Priddy Books

It will come as a surprise to nobody who knows him, but Halloween Dogs was one of Daniel’s favorite books for quite some time last year. Not only is it illustrated with actual photos of dogs, but it is sparkly and many of the areas are textured. Although, really, I think it was mostly about the dogs.

Halloween Dogs is more poem than something with a plot, talking about the way these anthropomorphic dogs relate to Halloween. The book is cute and the pages are brightly colored to keep a young child’s attention. That being said, I think Daniel liked it more when he was just a little over a year old. Now that he is over two, it isn’t quite sophisticated enough for him.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy
* 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.

Older Entries

Devourer of Books

Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant – Book Review

TSS: Home Sweet Home

Where is Baby’s Pumpkin? – Saturday Story Spotlight

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh – Audiobook Review

The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad – Book Review

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind by Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr. – Book Review

The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer – Book Review

Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman – Book Review

Sunday Salon: Portland

Halloween Dogs – Saturday Story Spotlight

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