Odd Pairings...

Cinderella Girl vs. The Cinderella Governess

Why these two books? Well, when I looked Cinderella Girl by Carin Gerhardsen up in the library catalog to see if my library had a copy, The Cinderella Governess by Georgie Lee was the very next book title on the list. And it was such a strange juxtaposition I couldn't resist checking them both out to see how they measured up against each other.  Here are the results:

◉ Swedish Crime Fiction                                               ◉ Regency Romance

◉ Lots of pieces and plot lines that keep                    ◉  Fun, if completely predictable

you guessing and only come together to                           plot. Comes with requisite 

form a complete picture at the very end.                           happily ever after ending.

◉  Between the many victims' POVs                           ◉  Spunky governess, Joanna 

and the various police detectives POVs,                           Radcliffe, and the honorable

I found it hard to connect with any of                               Major Luke Preston, her love

Gerhardsen's main characters.                                           interest, are both likeable and

                                                                                                  easy-to-root-for characters.

◉  Interesting and compelling mystery                        ◉ Light-hearted and humorous

that's a bit dark, but not too graphic.                                 romance.  And did I mention,

                                                                                                    completely predictable?

So, which book is better? Depends on what you're in the mood for. The Cinderella Governess would probably win on characters, but Cinderella Girl has the definite edge when it comes to plot. And while neither is a perfect read, I liked both books enough to give them each a 3.5/5 stars. Though I don't think I'll be rushing out to read either author again any time soon.

Happy Reading!

                                                                                           

Geeking out...

"The right answer is seldom as important as the right question."

--Kip Thorne

Kip Thorne came to Logan, Utah, last week to speak.  Kip Thorne! The man who won the Albert Einstein Medal in 2009, and the Novel Prize in physics in 2017, and who acted as science consultant on the film Interstellar.  I read his book, Black Holes & Time Warps, years ago and it blew my mind. So, last Thursday, I made the hour and a half drive north to Logan High School, from where Thorne graduated 60 years ago, to hear him give a lecture on "My Journey Through Space and Time:  The Big Bang, Black Holes and Gravitational Waves."  And it was awesome! He's funny, and good at explaining things, and so smart. He talked about his childhood and wanting to be a snow plow driver when he was seven, his college experiences at Cal Tech and Princeton, and his subsequent work on the LIGO detector, which detected the very first gravitational waves emitted from two colliding black holes on Sept. 14, 2015. Which led to him winning the Nobel Prize in 2017 along with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish.

Best of all, not only did I get to meet him, I also got him to sign my copy of his book! It was so cool! It was my geek moment of the week.  But really, how often do you get to meet an actual Nobel Prize winner?  

So, if you're looking for a stellar read on black holes, check out Thorne's masterpiece. You might feel dumb at the start, but by the time you finish it, you'll feel really smart! 

Here's a couple of other out-of-this-world books that I highly recommend:

Happy Reading!

Randomness...

Recently spotted: 

Family of Western Screech Owls. The babies were branching,
and a few days later they fledged and flew away. 

Favorite Summer Food:

• grilled burgers with cheese
• homemade potato salad
• fresh corn on the cob
• berry cobblers--any berry will do!
• S'mores!!

Indian Paintbrush

3 Things I don't love about summer:

• triple digit temperatures
• wildfires
• wasps building nests by my front door

3 Things I do love about summer:

• hiking with friends
• the sound of crickets chirping at night
• wildflowers

Looking forward to:

Another buddy read with Melody

Other books I also checked out of the library:

• Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire
• Widow's Point by Richard Chizmar
• Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym
• Cinderella Girl by Carin Gerhardsen

😎  I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer!

Happy Reading!

    

     

A little bookish fun...

Title:  Whispers Beyond the Veil
Author:  Jessica Estevao
Genre:  Historical fiction/mystery
Setting:  Old Orchard Beach, Maine, 1898
Main Character:  Ruby Proulx

5 Things to know about Ruby Proulx:  

• She was raised by her father and grew up traveling the medicine show circuit with him, helping to sell his "miracle" elixir to the needy and gullible.
• On the side, she tells fortunes using her dead mother's Tarot cards.
• She knows how to read people and can lie without batting an eye, but she has a good heart.
• When her father's latest get-rich scheme ends up killing a man, Ruby runs to Hotel Belden in Old Orchard Beach, which is owned by her Aunt Honoria whom she's never met.
• In order to help save her Aunt's hotel--which caters to the Spiritualist crowd--she pretends to be a medium who can speak to the dead even though her only psychic ability is the voice she occasionally hears advising her what to do (because it turns out, Ruby is clairaudient just like her mother was).

My thoughts:  This is a fun read. I like this time period. And Ruby is a great character, as are the other people she meets at the hotel, like Mrs. Doyle, the stern housekeeper who knows when someone is lying to her, and the two elderly Velmont sisters who are hoping to contact their dead father through Ruby. Then there's Officer Yancey who is investigating the recent murders at the hotel and who suspects that Ruby is somehow involved. Even though she's not. And while this isn't the most tightly woven mystery I've ever read, the few flaws and loose ends here and there didn't stop me from enjoying it. In fact, I liked it enough to have already put the next book in this series on hold at the library. 

Happy Reading!

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

Written in 1949, Earth Abides is a post-apocalyptic novel that explores what happens to civilization as we know it when a viral pandemic wipes out the vast majority of people. Isherwood "Ish" Williams, a solitary graduate student with an interest in ecology and in studying the relationship between man and nature, is one of the few survivors. His curiosity to see what will happen next is what helps keep him alive.

"In spite of the horror of the situation he felt a curious spectator's sense about it all, as if he were watching the last act of a great drama. This, he realized, was characteristic of his personality. He was a student, an incipient scholar, and such a one was necessarily oriented to observe, rather than to participate."

In Part I, Ish criss-crosses the country with his beagle, Princess, hoping to find a community of like-minded survivors he can join, but the few people he meets along the way are not people he wants to make a life with. So he returns to his home in California where he chances upon a woman named Em.

The strangeness! In the old world, it might well never have happened. Out of destruction had come, for him, love.

Part II begins 21 years later. The Tribe, made up of Ish and Em and their children and a few other families has survived, but they haven't really begun to create their own society; they still depend on scavenged items like matches and canned food (which would NOT still be good after 20+ years). And none of them seem too interested in perpetuating even the most basic skills like reading and math. Ish tries, but there is a lethargy to the others in his tribe that he is helpless to change. And at last he gives up.

His observation of what was happening kept him interested in life. At first, just after the Great Disaster, he had devoted himself to observing the changes in the world as the result of the disappearance of man. After twenty-one years, however, the world had fairly adjusted itself ... now, the problem of society--its adjustment and reconstruction--had moved to the fore and become his chief interest.

Still, the Tribe continues on, and Ish continues to observe them until the end of his life. Children are born. Others die. The rats from the city reach a population crisis and swarm. As do the ants, and the  wild cows. One stranger threatens their way of life. Typhoid strikes. There's a fire. And civilization as we know it dies out along with Ish, the last one who can remember it.

"Men go and come, but earth abides." --Ecclesiastes 1:4

This is a quiet, introspective novel, and a thoughtful look at what could happen if 98% of mankind was wiped out all at once. But for me it was a little disappointing. I kept waiting for what was happening to matter more to those involved...or for something more to happen. But the novel, like the members of Ish's tribe, just kept plodding along. Year after year, with little sense of urgency. I found it a little frustrating. There should be more drama when the world ends, shouldn't there? Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad read, and Stewart writes well, I just found it hard to care about any of his characters other than Ish, and Ish himself held back a lot and mostly thought about and observed what was happening without taking action to change any of it. Although, he did teach the children to make bows and arrows. And his Tribe does end up surviving. So there you go. But it all felt so removed from me that I wasn't that invested in any of it; mostly, I just didn't care.  Supposedly, this is the novel that inspired Stephen King's The Stand, but King's post-apocalyptic saga is a much more interesting and compelling read, with lots of characters that you can root for, at least in my opinion.

Happy Reading!

July's Bookish Art...

Valentine Cameron Prinsep -- Lady Tennyson on Afton Downs

"...no one---but no one at all---can tell you what to read and when and how."

--Doris Lessing

Bookish Suspense...

"Five women have disappeared from Gideon County, Texas, in the last six months. The latest was two nights ago. The victims have all vanished on Saturday night. And the period between abductions is diminishing. Commonalities between the abductions indicate that we're dealing with a single offender. Someone who's growing bolder, more confident."

Three FBI agents from the BAU--C.J. Emmerich, Brianne Rainey, and rookie Caitlin Hendrix--head to Texas to help chase down this escalating serial killer. Into the Black Nowhere by Meg Gardiner is a compelling cat-and-mouse game  between Caitlin and the killer. The suspense really picks up towards the end, making the last half unputdownable. I thought it read a lot like an episode of Criminal Minds, but without the overly graphic crime scenes. Caitlin, the main narrator, is very well developed. She has flaws and fears, grit and stick-to-itiveness, and a complicated past; I liked her a lot. The secondary characters were all good, too. And the killer is scarily manipulative, which made the book even better. And even though this is Gardiner's second UNSUB novel, you don't necessarily need to read the first one in order to enjoy this one. I didn't. Though I intend to go back and read it in the very near future. Gardiner's a great author. I'm excited to check out her many other novels.

Happy Reading!

Similar Read:  Blood Mist by Mark Roberts

                        The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen
                        Color Blind by ColbyMarshall

Favorite Fictional Characters...

The other day, Chuckles the Scot did a fun post about her favorite things. Among many other topics, she listed her favorite book characters, which got me thinking about who my favorite literary heroes and heroines are. So I came up with my own list. Here are my favorite bookish characters:

Ladies first:  (All ten of whom are smart, stubborn, strong-willed, independent, and full of spunk...which is why I like them!)

• Mercy Thompson  (Shapeshifter & car mechanic extraordinaire...who actually only has one tattoo:  a coyote paw.)
• Kiera  (artist & amateur detective from Anna Lee Huber's Lady Darby Series)
• Raederle of An  (from Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master of Hed series...my all-time favorite fantasy trilogy!)
• Mina Harker (No one in Bram Stoker's Dracula is tougher than Mina!)
• Lacey Flint (Sharon Bolton's complicated detective constable)

• Menolly (daughter of Yanus Sea-Holder, apprentice harper, and owner of nine small dragons)
• Laura Ingalls Wilder (Who's both character and author.)
• Kit Tyler (from Elizabeth George Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond)
• Lisbeth Salander (Probably the toughest girl of the bunch...and yet it was her vulnerability that really made me like her. Created by Stieg Larsson, of course.)
• Nancy Drew (Need I say more?)

Now for my favorite leading men:

• Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin (He tops my list!)
• Gabriel Allon (Daniel Silva's complicated Israeli artist & assassin)
• Morgan of Hed (Did I mention already that Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master of Hed Series is my all-time favorite fantasy series?)
• Harry Potter (Who needs no other introduction!)
• John Charming & John Taylor (This is a tie for me between Elliott James' exiled Knight Templar and Simon R. Green's hero of the Nightside who can find just about anything. They're both awesome!)

• Joe Harmon (from Nevil Shute's classic novel.)
• Francisco D'Anconia (my favorite character from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, although Dagny is a close second and almost made my first list of favorite female characters)
• Agent Aloysius Pendergast (Preston & Child's enigmatic and one-of-a-kind FBI agent)
• Alex Verus (Benedict Jacka's mage who can see into the future)
• Kaspar Krone (the only clown I've ever liked and hero of Peter Hoeg's The Quiet Girl)

Honorable mention:  All of Louis L'Amour's reluctant heroes...especially if their last name happens to be Sackett.

So, there you have it. My favorite fictional characters, male and female. It was hard narrowing it down to ten each, because there are a lot of great book characters out there, which means many characters that I love didn't make the list. But if I'd tried to list them all, this post would have been way too long.

Who are some of your all-time favorite book characters?

Happy Reading!

From the G Shelf...

Author:  Camille Griep

Title:  Letters to Zell

Excerpts:

Dearest Zell,

     What am I supposed to do without you? You and I didn't start out as royalty--me the little cinder girl and you Rapunzel, prisoner of the Tower. We complemented our eccentric princesses, the four of us a perfect team. Now we're like a three-legged goat.... The thing is, I had no idea that you wanted anything other than the life we're currently living. ....We've all lived beneath the weight of our Pages for so long that wanting something of our own volition feels dangerous. We aren't like the lucky ones waltzing around as they choose. You and I had to live out unpredictable stories penned by a capricious author. It's true we're free now, but I've never dreamed of admitting I still want more than what I already have ... 

We're all at risk of becoming imprisoned within our own mirrors. By our expectations of ourselves.

Happily Ever After isn't an ending, it's the journey we take from here.

Thoughts:

Camille Griep takes the stories of four princesses--Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel--and weaves them all together in her own imaginative interpretation of what happens when each princess tries to make her own dream come true. It's humorous and unexpected, and written entirely in letters. Which is one of the reasons I checked it out. I really like epistolary novels! I also liked how Griep drew from the Grimm versions of these tales as the basis for hers--and the characters' reactions when they visited Disneyland and saw the skewed Disney versions of their stores was VERY funny. But what I didn't love was how Griep chose to portray these four well-known fairy tale characters. While they had spunk and were distinct from one another, they were also childish, self-absorbed (Cinderella), a little whiny, a little spineless (especially Briar Rose), and kind of irritating at times. And Bianca (Snow White) used the f-word WAY too much. One other small thing bugged me:  Rapunzel left Grimmland to go tend unicorns in Oz, only there aren't unicorns in Oz. There never were! And I have L. Frank Baum's fourteen Oz books to back me up on this! Still, Letters to Zell is a pretty fun read. Not perfect. But fun. And I did like how Griep wrapped things up at the end. All in all, I'd give it 3/5 stars.

Happy Reading!

P.S. Happy Fourth of July ...especially to everyone in America! I hope you all have a wonderful Independence Day!

A Bookish dream...

Happy Reading!!

 P.S. I also love this inviting reading nook.

Oh, the happy hours I could spend here: