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We’ve reached the end of February, which also means that we have reached the end of BLOB. I have gotten rid of nearly 250 books this month and only brought about 6 new ones into the house, so I would say that it was pretty successful! I have no idea at this point whether I’ve won or not, Nicole and I are pretty much involved in a death match at the moment. I’ll have to make one more pass over my shelves and see if I can beat her.
I haven’t participated in the Sunday Salon in awhile, I know. We’ve been pretty busy. Part of that was my parents visiting and my husband redoing both of our bathrooms, but part of that was just Daniel. He’s 8 months now; just a couple of days before he turned 7 months he started crawling. Well, he wasn’t happy with just crawling for more than a few days. Very soon he started pulling up on anything and everything. Now he’s walking along holding onto the couch or table and even frequently letting go of everything and just trying to stand. He is so determined to walk! Then we’re really going to be in trouble.
Actually, Daniel also started swim lessons this week. I don’t know if he was just really used to the water from the bath or what, but he was much more interested in the other babies than in what was happening in the water. Here’s the video of him in the water with his daddy, he did NOT want to blow bubbles:
For some reason my reading week seemed really slow this week. I think it was because I’ve been dragging through the audio of Canterbury Tales for a couple of weeks already and still have a decent way to go. I actually had a really good reading week, though, which I didn’t realize until this morning, because I forgot about some stuff I’d read early in the week (not because the books were forgettable, just because I have no concept of days and weeks anymore without looking at a calendar.
Here’s what I finished:
And what I reviewed:
I also had a really, really great guest post from Melanie Benjamin as part of the Literary Road Trip.
After college, Susan Jane Gilman and her old roommate Claire decided they wanted to do something adventurous before settling down in their lives. During a meal together at IHop, of all places, they decided they were going to take a year and backpack around the world, starting in China, pre-Tienanmen Square. Susan probably should have figured out something was not quite right when Claire’s father was so adamantly against her going on this trip, warning her of all of the bad things that could happen. Or perhaps when Claire started talking about the young Israeli man she was infatuated with before they left who, oh, by the way, was a member of Mossad. As if it wasn’t hard enough to be two young girls backpacking through Communist China in the 1980s, strange things begin happening, and Claire begins to act secretively, and hints that they may be being followed by any number of spy agencies.
Oh my goodness, I simply could not stop reading “Undress Me In The Temple of Heaven.” I was somewhat skeptical, wondering why I wanted to read Gilman’s travel memoir; after all, quite a lot of people seem to get memoirs published when their lives are not particularly noteworthy. Well, I learned the answer to why I would want to read Gilman’s travel memoir, and that is because it is AWESOME. Not only is Gilman’s writing fantastic, the story she was telling – all true, by the way, with just some identifying details of certain people changed – was absolutely fascinating. I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out whether Claire was crazy or somehow involved in high stakes espionage (and no, I’m not going to tell you which it was) and when Susan would figure out just exactly what was going on. Really, this story is bizarre enough you’d think it was fiction, except as fiction it would probably be too improbable to be published.
I definitely recommend this book for the descriptions of the girls’ travel, Gilman’s writing style, and the highly emotional intensity.
This review was done with a book received from my local library.
* 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.
Paha Sapa is a Lakota man who has seen the evolution of the American West from the Battle of Little Big Horn to the carving of Mount Rushmore. What is more, he has been an integral part of all of these things: he counted coup on Custer at Little Big Horn (and ended up haunted/possessed by Custer’s horny ghost – more on that later – for his troubles), performed with Buffalo Bill at the Chicago World’s Fair, and acted as a powderman in the carving of Mount Rushmore. Paha Sapa, known throughout the book also as Billy Slow Horse and Billy Slovak, is not just any Lakota man, though, he has a special gift, or perhaps curse, of being able to see people’s future and past sometimes upon touching them. Perhaps because of this, he is blessed by the Six Grandfathers with a vision that will provide him with a life’s mission.
Okay, so this “Black Hills” sounds really interesting and, actually, it was. However, I would only recommend it with the greatest of reservations. I had a couple really huge problems with it. First, as I mentioned before, Paha Sapa’s haunting/possession/whatever by Custer’s ghost. First of all,by the end of the book I was convinced that nothing about the Custer storyline really added much of significance to the story that Simmons is telling here. Yes, it was partly done to help establish Paha Sapa’s gift, but I think that Simmons established that just fine through other parts of the story, and so this was unnecessary. Really, it all just felt to me like a manipulative ploy, a selling point “OMG! Custer’s ghost invading the body of a Lakota boy at Little Big Horn! The drama!” This book was almost 500 pages and definitely felt too long, the exclusion of the entire Custer storyline would have brought it to just about the length I think would have worked best.
If it wasn’t bad enough that Custer’s entire storyline felt irrelevant (well, that might be too strong, but I really do not think it added anything to the book), there were the ‘letters’ ‘written’ by Custer’s ghost to his wife. Evidently Custer and his wife had quite the sex life, because these letters were pretty explicit. Talk about not adding anything to the story! I assume that the point of these was to establish how much Custer loved his wife, which was relevant to his storyline but not, I think, to the greater purpose of the novel; however, they seemed to me to indicate much more that Custer’s wife was a freaky lady than that they had a true, great, deep love. Oh, and all his letters were in italics – pages and pages of it – because, didn’t I mention?, all the dialogue in the book was in italics.
And that was my second big issue with the book, the dialogue being in italics. I really don’t understand the purpose, other than to do something different. I suppose it could be argued that doing something different like that gave the book a little more of a mystical or memory-laden feel, but mostly it just annoyed me. I was able to get used to reading that, but I pretty much still continued to hate it throughout the book. Probably it wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I wasn’t already annoyed with the whole Custer thing, though.
The really sad thing is, the rest of the book was really pretty good! Okay, I thought the ending was a little bizarre, but Paha Sapa’s story was fascinating, growing up through the Indian wars, the huge push towards agencies and reservations, Buffalo Bill’s show and the Chicago World’s Fair, the carving of Mount Rushmore, all really interesting stuff! I just really wish the Custer stuff hadn’t been in there to detract from the rest of it and it really did detract, the sex letters particularly just pulled me out of the story (I finally decided to only read Custer’s letters until the first time they got explicit, then skip to the next chapter, I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything important). This book had so much potential, I think it was really a missed opportunity. If it hadn’t been for the Custer stuff, I’d probably give it a mental rating of 4 or even 4.5, even with the italics. Now I think it would be about a 3, because after about page 100 the story took off and got interesting, but it just wasn’t enough to redeem it for me.
I would recommend this only to those with a strong interest in the history of the American West and the interaction between whites and Native Americans. Even then, I’d say be prepared for some randomness.
This review was done with a book received from Miriam at Hachette so that I could take part in the discussion on That’s How I Blog.
* 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.
Melanie Benjamin is the wonderful author of the equally wonderful book ALICE I HAVE BEEN. I was able to meet her at an event at The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn and she was so gracious and did an amazing job reading from her book (you can really tell she once was an actor!). When I realized she lived in the vicinity as well, I knew I just had to feature her for the Literary Road Trip. She was kind enough to supply me with this fabulous guest post about writing ALICE I HAVE BEEN the inspiration for which, coincidentally, occurred to her right here in Chicago!
What makes an author suddenly change genres? It’s not something many of us would choose to do. But as it sometimes happens, the genres choose us—if we are smart enough to realize it.
Prior to writing ALICE I HAVE BEEN, I had absolutely no desire to write historical fiction; if you asked me if I read it, even, I would have answered with a resounding “no.” In my mind, historical fiction was all about the Tudor era, an era that holds little interest for me. I’ve since realized, however, that actually my shelves are full of historical novels. But I’m always interested in a great story first, not a particular era, so again, in my mind it wasn’t a genre to which I was particularly drawn.
So how, you might ask, did I suddenly become a historical fiction author? In my case, it was simply because I left my house.
I was very much in a rut, writing-wise; under a different name I published two contemporary novels but wasn’t content with the subject matter. I knew I needed to write something different but didn’t know just what; for a long while, I kept trying to re-write the same old subject in a different way. I felt stuck in a literary maze of my own design, one that was going to ruin because of my own neglect.
This is an occupational hazard of authors’, I truly believe. We get something in our heads, an idea of who we are as writers, what we stand for, and maybe it works for us for a while. Maybe it doesn’t. Yet we still spend years reworking the same territory, unable to see that perhaps there’s a reason why it isn’t working any longer. Some people spend years reworking the same manuscript. We find it comfortable and safe in our little author-den, cloistered from the world at large.
But I did something that changed my life; in the midst of this rut, I got out of my house. I had a moment of clarity when I realized that my creative well was dried up, and I needed to replenish it—and I was not going to do that by staying home and continuing on the same overgrown, well-worn path.
Somehow I knew I needed to look outward; I could have seen a movie, attended a concert, gone to an art exhibit. What I did was take a train into the city, walk into the Art Institute of Chicago, and stumble into a photographic exhibit that changed my life.
I would never have sought it out; I had no great interest in Victorian photography. But because I was out of my house, into the world, I happened upon an exhibit called “Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll.”
“Lewis Carroll? Who knew he took photographs,” I thought, wandering into a small basement room. And once there, confronted by wall after wall of pictures of young girls, I became fixated on one photograph in particular—that of Alice Liddell, the 7-year-old daughter of Dean Henry Liddell of Christ Church, Oxford, and the inspiration for ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND.
Until that moment, I didn’t know there had ever been a real little girl named Alice. Suddenly I was curious to know what happened to her when she grew up and left Wonderland behind; dying to understand what happened between the photographer and very young subject to result in such a startling image. Suddenly I had an inspiration, an idea that would never have found me still sitting at home, staring at my laptop.
Suddenly, I wondered what it might be like to write historical fiction.
When I told my agent I was thinking about this new direction, she was supportive, but cautious; after all, I’d never written anything close to this before. She encouraged me to try, and was very excited about the story, but always she reminded me that it would depend upon how well I could pull it off. So I dedicated myself to learning how to do just that.
When I sent her the first fifty pages, she liked the story but felt my voice was still too contemporary. She suggested I re-read some Victorian-era novels, and then rewrite what I had in that style. I re-read Jane Eyre, some Dickens, Lady Audley’s Secret. I re-wrote my pages, and didn’t even have to send them to my agent to know that while they were very authentic to the era, they were difficult for modern readers to follow. Too authentic, in fact; long, dense sentences, an over-reliance on adverbs. The language was now a barrier to the story.
So I re-wrote them again. I decided to toss aside the research to a certain extent, striving to write in a way that would sound authentic to a modern reader, not a reader weaned on Dickens. I sent them off to my ever-patient agent, and somehow a miracle occurred; she was ecstatic. She felt I had captured enough of the flavor of the period yet managed not to tax the contemporary reader too much. Somehow it just worked, and I was off and running, a full-fledged historical novelist. No one was as surprised as I was. (Well, except, perhaps, for my agent, who now had one less contemporary novelist on her list.)
I learned so much while writing ALICE I HAVE BEEN. I learned that Alice Liddell had to hold completely still for at least forty-five seconds when Charles Dodgson snapped that memorable photograph. I learned that John Ruskin went mad and had to be removed from a classroom near the end of his life after breaking down. I learned that Alice in Wonderland really did meet Peter Pan at Columbia University in 1932.
But the most valuable thing I learned is that inspiration comes when you least expect it, and in a shape you might not be looking for. It was true for Charles Dodgson—or Lewis Carroll—in 1862, and it was true for me in 2008. He wasn’t looking to become an author of children’s literature—he was a mathematics professor, for heaven’s sake! And certainly, I wasn’t looking to become an author of historical fiction.
Yet ultimately, we were both open to the idea. That’s the thing all authors, all artists, need to remember. And most often that means walking away from the laptop, the writing desk, the office. We need to get out there and experience other people’s art, other people’s ideas, in order to create our own.
And sometimes we need to just take a big breath and follow that white rabbit blindly, wherever he may take us.
Melanie Benjamin, author of ALICE I HAVE BEEN, Delacorte Press
The Literary Road Trip is the brainchild of Michelle at GalleySmith. It is a chance for book bloggers to spotlight local authors and their books. I will be spotlighting authors and books from Illinois (my current state of residence) and Indiana (my state of birth).
I originally received a copy of this book from the publisher, but I have since given that away and purchased my own copy to keep because I loved it!
* 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.
Nivienne is one of the fey of the land that humans call Avalon and daughter of the Lady of the Lake. Although the fey tend to hold themselves separate from men, she deigns to join Merlin in the land of men in order to aid Arthur and his kingdom in their fight against the Saxons. She helps not for the sake of Arthur and his people, but for the sake of the fey, whose peace Merlin believes will be disturbed if the Saxons overtake the land.
This was a very different take on Arthurian legend, and I appreciated that. Nivienne is a strong female voice and, as one of the fey, has a very different perspective than is often found in stories of Arthur. That being said, I did not end up loving this book.
It was not that the writing was bad, or the book itself was poorly done, it was more a stylistic choice (I think) that I understand but which hindered my enjoyment of the book. Basically, character and world development was really not very fully fleshed out. As one of the fey, Nivienne was very other worldly and set apart from the human world, she simply was not interested in helping to fill in the missing pieces of what was actually happening. Don’t get me wrong, this lent a great sense of ambiance to the book, but it really didn’t work for me, I wanted the world and the actions to be more fully explored, without 5 or more years passing by with a couple of pages, just because the mind of a fey is so different than the mind of humans.
I really wasn’t crazy about “Merlin’s Harp,” but there’s lots of room for other opinions here, I know that some people will be drawn in by the unique perspective and how thoroughly Nivienne’s personality insinuates itself into every part of the story. If you want to decide for yourself, you can read the first 47 pages of “Merlin’s Harp” on the book’s page.
This review was done with a book received from Paul at Sourcebooks Fire.
* 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 other reviews, check out these blogs (links go to blog homepage, not to individual reviews):
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
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During those dark, endless hours, as lists flew through my mind and my heart pounded, I sometimes thought about what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had to fight so hard to carve out my own identity, one that would keep me from fading into a shadow when my twin sister was around. Would I be this driven, this fixated on success, if I’d been born into another family?
Beth F
bermudaonion (Kathy)
Jennifer
Michelle
Sandy
We’ve reached the end of February, which also means that we have reached the end of BLOB. I have gotten rid of nearly 250 books this month and only brought about 6 new ones into the house, so I would say that it was pretty successful! I have no idea at this point whether I’ve won or not, Nicole and I are pretty much involved in a death match at the moment. I’ll have to make one more pass over my shelves and see if I can beat her.
Grab your current read.
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