Jane Austen Made Me Do It edited by Laurel Ann Nattress- Book Review

Dec 072011

Jane Austen Made Me Do It edited by Laurel Ann Nattress
Published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House

The past few years in particular have seen a plethora of Jane Austen retellings and adaptations. Many of these adaptations are beloved almost as much as Austen’s original stories are. It is gratifying to see an author who has been dead nearly 200 years inspiring such love and devotion that an entire subgenre has developed out of her work. Laurel Ann Nattress, a lover both of Austen’s original books and the “Austenesque” novels, decided to bring together some of the very best authors in the Austenesuqe subgenre – as well as some other authors who have been heavily influenced by Austen’s work – for a collection of original short stories: Jane Austen Made Me Do It.

Sometimes I’m not sure if there has ever been a review written of a short story collection that does not include the word “uneven.” Unfortunately, there are few short story collections that manage to avoid needing such a designation. That reality becomes particularly obvious when the collection is pulled together from the stories of twenty-two different authors. With the exception of Brenna Aubrey, a new writer whose story was included after she won the Jane Austen Made Me Do It short story contest, most of the featured authors are beloved in their genres.

However, though they are incredibly well-respected, these authors are primarily novelists, and many of them did not transition well into the short story form. The second story in particular, Waiting, read as if it were a scene from a novel, rather than a story in its own right. Waiting stood out the most for this issue, but it was evident in other stories to a lesser degree as well. Interestingly, Aubrey’s story, the one submitted through the short story contest, was one of the best.

Certainly, though, there are bright spots in Jane Austen Made Me Do It, in addition to simply Aubrey’s story. Lauren Willig and Jo Beverley’s stories stand out in particular. The casual fan of Austenesque stories might do better to pick a novel by one of these generally esteemed writers, but die hard fans will find enough to love in Jane Austen Made Me Do It that it is worth buying.

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.

BOOK CLUB – The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate

Nov 152011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture Welcome to BOOK CLUB, which I run with co-conspirator Nicole from Linus’s Blanket. Today we will be chatting about The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate, which was released on September 27th by Algonquin Books (website | twitter | facebook). For those of you reading this post, please remember that this discussion is likely to contain spoilers.

Here is the synopsis of the book I wrote for my review:

Josie Henderson wants nothing more than to leave her family and the legacy of addiction behind her. She’s married now, a successful scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Still, though, she is terrified that if anyone at work new about her family she would go from being the only black female scientist to be the black girl whose daddy used to be a drunk and whose brother is in rehab. Life had been going more or less smoothly, but now her brother Tick’s release from rehab forces Josie to once again face her family. When a new scientist with a background similar to Josie’s own joins the staff at Woods Hole, it quickly becomes apparent that Josie’s carefully constructed life is simply a veneer, and that what is underneath is not as solid as she believes.

tasteofsalt picture Before we get started, here are some of the reviews of readers who will be participating today:

1330v
Between the Covers
Caribou’s Mom
Cheap Black Pens
Devourer of Books
The Feminist Texan [Reads]
Linus’s Blanket
Rhapsody in Books
Savvy Verse & Wit

If you plan on participating in today’s BOOK CLUB, please consider subscribing to comments at the bottom of the page (please use the TOP subscription option, the second option will subscribe you only to replies of your own comments). I will be updating this post with new questions and ideas over the course of the day.

Here we go…

First off, what were your general impressions of the book?
Is this a book you would have read had you not been reading it for a book club?
It is not always immediately apparent which family member is narrating a given chapter. What do you think Southgate’s purpose is in structuring her story like this, and do you think it worked well?
Josie feared that if people knew she was a black girl with an alcoholic brother they would judge her harshly. How did she let this influence her life?
Did Josie’s marriage ever have a chance? What were the problems they faced, and how might they have been overcome?
Do you think that Josie and Ray have hope of a real reconciliation at the end of the book? Why? What brought them to this place?
Did you have any other questions about the book that you hoped to get answered?

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Nov 092011

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Published by Signet Classics, an imprint of Penguin

Recently Nicole and I read The Scarlet Pimpernel for a classics rip episode of What’s Old is New. Now, this isn’t the first time that I had read – or blogged about, for that matter – The Scarlet Pimpernel. Almost three and a half years ago, I read Baroness Orczy’s book alongside Lauren Willig’s flower spy series (as an aside, how is that I have blog posts that are almost 3.5 years old?!?) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Still, even though it was a relatively recent read, I was afraid that The Scarlet Pimpernel might not hold up, since I’ve probably read 600 books since then.

What I found was that I loved The Scarlet Pimpernel just as much as I did three years ago. As a classic action adventure novel it is an inordinate amount of fun. There are the requisite misunderstandings and thwarted love affairs, dashing heroes rescuing people from certain death, and a villain readers will love to hate.

Of course, nobody is going to be super surprised that I enjoyed The Scarlet Pimpernel since I loved it three years ago and suggested it for this classics rip episode. Nicole was a skeptic, though, and only really agreed to read it at all because I told her it was very short. If you want to know if she liked it too, though, you’ll have to listen to the episode.

By the way, in this episode we also announced a contest for the first person who can recommend to us a Dickens book we actually both like. If you have suggestions, please add them to the comments on the episode.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

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.

November BOOK CLUB giveaway – The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate

Oct 102011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture It is that time again! We are gearing up for this month’s discussion of The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer (Tuesday, October 25th on Nicole’s blog), but it is also time to give away next month’s BOOK CLUB selection. In November we will be reading an offering from Algonquin Books, The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate.

tasteofsalt picture

We will be discussing The Taste of Salt right here on Tuesday, November 15. Please note this date is a week earlier than normal to accommodate people’s Thanksgiving travel.

From the publisher:

Josie Henderson loves the water and is fulfilled by her position as the only senior-level black scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In building this impressive life for herself, she has tried to shed the one thing she cannot: her family back in landlocked Cleveland. Her adored brother, Tick, was her childhood ally as they watched their drinking father push away all the love that his wife and children were trying to give him. Now Tick himself has been coming apart and demands to be heard.
Weaving four voices into a beautiful tapestry, Southgate charts the lives of the Hendersons from the parents first charmed meeting to Josie ‘s realization that the ways of the human heart are more complex than anything seen under a microscope.

If you would like to be considered as a participant for November, please fill out the form below by noon, Eastern on Thursday, October 13th. 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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The School of Night by Louis Bayard

Oct 052011

The School of Night by Louis Bayard
Published by Henry Holt & Co, an imprint of Macmillan

On a recent episode of What’s Old is New, Nicole and I had the pleasure of speaking to Louis Bayard about his latest book, The School of Night. The School of Night is a dual time period piece, the modern piece dealing with rare manuscript collectors and the historical piece dealing with a secret society of Elizabethan scholars who took their name from a line in one of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare himself plays an integral role in The School of Night.

Louis had a lot of fascinating things to say about the influence that classic authors continue to have today, but that isn’t terribly surprising, considering the homages he has included to so many classic authors in his published work.

thepaleblueeye picture mrtimothy picture

In The Pale Blue Eye, Edgar Allen Poe helps Bayard’s main character solve the mysterious death of one of Poe’s associates. Unlike the other books which focus on the real men themselves, Mr. Timothy reimagines as an adult one of the best known characters in Western literature: Charles Dickens’s Timothy Cratchit.

Bayard’s thoughts on the continuing importance of the classics, especially their importance for modern authors, is truly inspiring and I encourage you all to listen to this episode. Just a warning, though, it may cause you to add to your TBR pile.

Buy The School of Night 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.

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan – Book Review

Oct 032011

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
Published by Algonquin Books

After The Great Scourge, abortion is considered an especially heinous crime as the country tries to recover its birthrate. Women who get abortions have their skin turned red through the process of melochroming, a sentence that eliminates the need for the government to house the convicted, while still allowing the citizenry to feel safe from criminals. Hannah Payne finds herself a Red after aborting her baby. She would never have done so, but if she had given birth to a child out-of-wedlock, she would have been compelled to name the father, and she simply cannot do that to the man she loves. Naming her child’s father would have destroyed both his personal and public life. Now Hannah must decide what life looks like as the shamed woman she now is.

When she woke, she was red. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign. -p. 1

If Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale had a slightly futuristic baby, it would be When She Woke. Jordan makes it quite clear that this is a retelling of The Scarlet Letter, not only giving Hannah a situation and name very similar to Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, but when Hannah is compelled to name the baby she would have had, she calls her Pearl, which was Hester’s daughter’s name as well.

Unlike Hawthorne, however, Jordan is not content to deal just in the themes of sin and legalism. Instead, she goes deeper into her protagonist’s life to focus on personal choice, agency, and faith. At one time Hannah was a faithful, Christian girl in a conservative society. After her fall for something that initially seemed so heaven-sent, she has an entirely understandable crisis of faith and must decide whether she and God have abandoned one another, or if she can make sense out of her faith and what her life has become.

While there are some moments of the book that lose steam, the story is an incredibly compelling one overall, and a likely a modern classic in its own right. 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.

BOOK CLUB – The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp

Sep 272011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture Welcome to BOOK CLUB, which I run with co-conspirator Nicole from Linus’s Blanket. Today we will be chatting about The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp, which is being released in paperback by Picador on October 25th (website | twitter | facebook). For those of you reading this post, please remember that this discussion is likely to contain spoilers.

Here is the synopsis of the book I wrote for my review:

Little K was a prima ballerina, the lover of the last Russian tsar. A woman whose determination brought her into the beds of many members of the imperial family, but whose brilliant future was derailed when Russia as she knew it began to disappear, along with her beloved Tsar Nicholas II, and something where the concubine of the Romanovs was a dangerous thing to be. But perhaps it would be best to let Little K introduce herself in her own words, as this is a story she has been endlessly remembering for the past 50 years:

My name is Mathilde Kschessinska, and I was the greatest Russian ballerina on the imperial stages. But the world I was born to, the world I was bred for, is gone, and all the players in it are also gone – dead, murdered, exiled, walking ghosts. -p. 3

littlek picture Before we get started, here are some of the reviews of readers who will be participating today:

Beachreader
Devourer of Books
Reviews by Lola

Here we go…

First off, what were your general impressions of the book?
Is this a book you would have read had you not been reading it for a book club?
Near the beginning of the book, Little K makes this somewhat provocative statement about Nicki’s marriage to Alix. Do you think, based on the events of the book, that she was correct about this?
And what kind of wife would I have made him? Could I have stood his future – imprisonment and
a martyr’s death? I can assure you this: if I had been his wife, that would not have been his future. -p. 23
What do you think was the root of Little K’s determination to be part of the tsar’s life? How did you feel about the way she positioned her son?
Do you think that Little K fully understood the causes of the revolution? What helped or hindered her in this?
Do you think that Sharp made the causes of the revolution clear to the reader?

12 review copies of The True Memoirs of Little K were provided by Picador in order to facilitate this discussion. Thank you!

The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp – Book Review

Sep 202011

The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp
Published by Picador, an imprint of Macmillan

Little K was a prima ballerina, the lover of the last Russian tsar. A woman whose determination brought her into the beds of many members of the imperial family, but whose brilliant future was derailed when Russia as she knew it began to disappear, along with her beloved Tsar Nicholas II, and something where the concubine of the Romanovs was a dangerous thing to be. But perhaps it would be best to let Little K introduce herself in her own words, as this is a story she has been endlessly remembering for the past 50 years:

My name is Mathilde Kschessinska, and I was the greatest Russian ballerina on the imperial stages. But the world I was born to, the world I was bred for, is gone, and all the players in it are also gone – dead, murdered, exiled, walking ghosts. -p. 3

Mathilde Kscessinska is a fascinating subject through whose eyes the reader can explore the fall of tsarist Russia. As a member of the Imperial Ballet and daughter of well-respected Catholic Poles as well as the mistress of Tsar Nicholas II and at least two other members of the imperial family, she had a unique point of view for the fall of the empire, particularly as she also had the benefit of hindsight from her Parisian exile. Sharp excelled in creating Little K’s voice. There was a sort of learned regal quality to her thoughts, a self-aware verbosity that spoke of a women reaching to achieve a higher station. Occasionally this resulted in mild distraction, such as when commas extended sentences far too long, or when Little K would digress into future events while telling her story. Still, overall it was done to good effect.

Although some of the more minor characters are easily confused, Little K’s story is a dramatic and interesting one that is told well. 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.

October BOOK CLUB giveaway – The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer

Sep 192011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture It is that time again! We are gearing up for this month’s discussion of The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharpe (Tuesday, September 27 right here), but it is also time to give away next month’s BOOK CLUB selection. In October we will be reading another offering from Picador, The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer.

marriageartist picture

We will be discussing The Marriage Artist on Tuesday, October 25th on Nicole’s blog.

From the publisher:

When the wife of renowned art critic Daniel Lichtmann plunges to her death, she is not alone. Lying next to her is Benjamin Wind, the very artist Daniel most championed. Dedicating himself to uncovering the secrets of their relationship, Daniel discovers a web of mysteries leading back to pre–World War II Vienna. Ambitious, haunting, and stunningly written, The Marriage Artist is an “elaborate psycho-political-sexual puzzle, with…hard truths, startling visions, and eerie insights into the mystical and memorializing powers of art, and that endless hunger we call love” (Booklist).

If you would like to be considered as a participant for October, please fill out the form below by the end of the day Wednesday, September 21. 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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The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – What’s Old is New

Sep 192011

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

One thing Nicole and I have realized during our year with What’s Old is New (our literary classics podcast, if you didn’t already know) is that we tend to like the books based off of and inspired by classics a lot more than we like the classics. Another thing we have realized is that much of our popularity actually seems to come from our dislike of so many of the classics we have read. People wait with horror to see what blasphemous things we will say about their favorite classics, or with anticipation to see if we will join them in their distaste for something they were just never able to get into.

With that in mind, we’ve added a new format of show to our schedule, one we are informally calling the Classics Rip, in which we simply just both read a book, and then discuss it on the podcast. Essentially it is just the first section of one of our main shows. For our inaugural show, we decided on The Catcher in the Rye, perhaps one of the more polarizing classics out there.

I don’t want to spoil this episode for you, but my background with The Catcher in the Rye is that I read it in college and absolutely detested it. To me, Holden was nothing more than a whiny brat. On this read, my reaction was a bit more nuanced. Holden still grated, and all his talk of the ‘fakes’ all around him made me think he was protesting a bit too much (dude is the fakiest faker that ever did fake), but I was able to recognize more clearly just how much his brother’s death screwed him up, and my annoyance was (somewhat) tempered with sympathy. Of course, that didn’t eliminate all of the obnoxiousness, and I still can’t remember the last time a book made me want to swear so much.

Nicole, on the other hand, really liked The Catcher in the Rye when she first read it (she was younger than I was when she first experienced it). Up until now, we have always agreed on the classics and whether or not they should remain in our personal canon. Will this be the first literary cat fight on What’s Old is New? You’ll have to listen to find out.

Buy this book from:
Powells| Indiebound*

Source: Library, for 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.

Older Entries Newer Entries

Devourer of Books

Jane Austen Made Me Do It edited by Laurel Ann Nattress- Book Review

BOOK CLUB – The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

November BOOK CLUB giveaway – The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate

The School of Night by Louis Bayard

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan – Book Review

BOOK CLUB – The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp

The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp – Book Review

October BOOK CLUB giveaway – The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – What’s Old is New

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