Category: Uncategorized

  Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander is best read by the flicker of a fireplace, a cup of English tea and a warm throw over one’s knees. I read Outlander years ago and now that the series has come to the TV screen, I’ve begun reading the series again. Honestly, I think it is even better the second time around. And it doesn’t take away a thing from the novel that I now have flesh and blood characters to inhabit the protagonists. And what characters they are.

If you haven’t read Diana’s novels, then you are missing a wonderful historical romance, filled with heart pounding adventure and a love story that transcends time and place. So don’t wait. Grab a cup of tea, light a candle if you don’t have a fireplace and settle down on a cold fall afternoon or evening and get ready to inhabit Scotland and those very interesting kilts!

When magic is in the air…..

Let fools beware….

Author, Sara Gruen is an excellent novelist. I read Water for Elephants a few years ago and from time to time, I reread my favorite novels. This novel is one of them. While I enjoyed the movie with Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon, the novel is far better.

Sara’s research on traveling Circuses during great depression is richly detailed without overtaking the essence of the story or characters. The novel opens with ninety year old Jacob Jankowski ensconced in a dreary nursing home. He’s grumpy and taciturn. The food is bland and the old ladies are to him, a gaggle of hens. More and more, Jacob finds his thoughts turning to the past and the life he once lived long ago as a circus vet. Jacob remarks that he is ninety or ninety-three, but at his age, he is not longer counting. We are drawn into his memories and so the story begins.

When Jacob’s parents are killed in an auto accident, he is forced to leave his last year at Cornell where he’d been studying to become a verternarian. Penniless, he hits the road and hops a train that happens to be the Benzini Brothers traveling circus. He is hired as the show’s vet.

Jacob faces danger on a daily basis, not only because of his growing attraction to Marlena, the beauty who is the star equestrian act of the circus, but because of her husband, August, a ring master who is a bully and quick with a jealous, evil temper. These are hard times and circuses are failing. The boss, Big Al, who decides the life and death of many of the hired hands, desires an elephant, a trained elephant that can bring the rubes (hapless townspeople) into the big tent.

Big Al gets his elephant. Her name is Rosie and she doesn’t seem to understand any directions at all. She’s sweet, but gets into trouble. August, the bad tempered husband of Marlena, cruelly beats Rosie to get her to perform. Jacob finds that Rosie does not understand English. Her former trainer was Polish. Together, Jacob and Marlena strive to protect and save Rosie. August sees their attraction and attempts to get Jacob Red-lighted, which means to be thrown of the moving train at midnight. No spoilers here.

Water for Elephants is a fascinating read, filled with danger, acts of evil, overwhelming kindness, and enduring love.

I highly recommend this wonderful novel.

She fills the sink

Till the bubbles rise

And she sighs

Just like her dreams

The bubbles pop and disappear

Till she is left with only her fears

Baby’s pulling at her knee

She picks him up and twirls him

WEEEEEEEE………

The radio is playing its musical fantasy

Vibrating the air

And in the kitchen, there

She dances with baby on her hip

And because she loves

The laughter on his sweet face

She makes herself content to wait

To realize the dreams she needs

To make her life complete

Author, Bryn Greenwood has written a love story, a forbidden love story, a reviled love story, but one that is true to the deepest meaning of love. We have our notions of family, but truly, what is a family unless there is love?

I guess family comes in many packages, as does love. Like family, Love can hurt, can abuse, can neglect, can rescue, and kill. Love is both ugly and beautiful. So here is the story of Wavonna, a beautiful wisp of a child, an angel by the looks of her. Yet, the mother who loves her has many faces, the least of which is a loving, caring mother. She is a mother with mental illness and this illness shapes Wavonna and her view of love and of the world. Called Wavy by those who come to know her, those who will care for her even though she has gone beyond the reach of normal, but her view of love and life is hers alone.

Told with the voices of those who are her family, a story emerges of a child who is old beyond her years, and damaged by those who may or may not love her, yet, Wavy prevails. We may not agree with the life she’s chosen, or whom she has chosen to love, but she creates her own family and in that family, there is abundant love.  And as we should know, in the end, love is all we need.

Greenwood’s writing is clear and concise and wonderful even as we cringe in her telling of it. It’s a novel that may not be for everyone, but it is a story we can believe.

I read this novel many years ago, and after reading it once again, I found it to be even more relevant in today’s political climate.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a horrifying dystopian account of what life would be under repressive, rightwing fundamentalists who have taken over the government. Atwood’s writing is sparse, but elegant. In this world, women are disenfranchised, indoctrinated and controlled by watchers. The fictional Gilead, the new republic, endeavors to supplant the population with white only children. Women of childbearing age are farmed out as breeders to the Republic’s Elite Commanders who, under direct supervision, have sexual intercourse with the women after a Bible reading ceremony.

The narrator, Offred, meaning she is of Fred, who is her commander, remembers her life from before in various flashbacks throughout the novel. She had been the mother of a daughter and married to a man she loved. They tried to escape, but were captured and separated. Offred never learns what happened to them. Many Handmaids commit suicide, and Offred considers it.

Subversives, academics and non-whites are summarily tortured and garroted on walls that had once been academic institutions. Women must be subservient to their husbands in all matters and beatings by men are allowed. Books and magazines are burned. Women are not allowed to read. The written word is replaced by pictures as to not tempt women to read or learn how to read.

The ending is ambiguous, though there is the possibility that Offred escaped via a network of Quakers.

A couple of centuries forward during a consortium, a professor of history plays 30 tapes by one woman who describes what she endured during those terrible times. It is assumed to be Offred.

This novel is both fascinating and horrifying. Fear and revulsion of others is a slippery slope and one that leads to Authoritarianism, reminiscent of the Nazi’s. Freedom for all must be carefully guarded. I highly recommend this novel.

Author, Nicola Yoon’s storytelling is unique in that she uses multiple POV’s and does so successfully. Most of the story takes place in one day. The two major protagonists, Natasha and Daniel, are both on their way to appointments. Natasha to the immigration office and Daniel on his way to a college interview.  They meet on a sidewalk in Manhattan and this is where their stories converge.

Natasha and her family are due to be deported from the US to Jamaica in a matter of hours. Natasha and her family have been in the America since Natasha was 10 years old.  America is her home and she’s about to graduate from high school.  She’s desperate to stay in America.

Daniel’s family are Korean immigrants, but they are documented citizens. Daniel’s family wants him to go to Yale and become a Doctor, but he’d rather be a poet. Still, as a good son, he will follow his family’s wishes.

Daniel is immediately attracted to Natasha and he pursues her through a series of happenstances and they spend the day together. Their meeting seems impactful to both of them and the reader will want a happy resolution, but that is not life, though all is not lost. Both take something meaningful away from their encounter, something they will never forget.

Even if life is not fair, fate, fickle as it is, construes for them to connect again in the far future. The rest is left to the readers’ imagination.

Nicola’s writing is excellent and the story is interesting on many levels. I enjoyed her characterization of their encounters.

Kathleen Flynn has meticulously crafted a fine and intelligent novel about Jane Austen’s world. She has successfully melded and incorporated a realistic version of what would happen if Jane had lived to write more novels. What if future time travelers altered the course of history and Jane’s life? What if their purpose had been to merely find and retrieve a lost novel of hers, only to change the course of history?

Our protagonists, Rachel, a highly respected physician, and Liam, a well known, British actor, author and historian of sorts, are chosen to do just that.

They had prepared and trained for a year because stepping back in time, existing there as being part of that time with the specific dictates of the genders, is not an easy thing. They had to be believable and become fast friends of the Austen’s. No easy task.

No spoilers here, but for lovers of anything Austen, or of the Regency era, Kathleen Flynn succeeded on all levels. This is a wonderful novel, well written and filled with interesting details. I’m sure Austen lovers will love it as much as I did.

Originally posted on Legends of Windemere: Yahoo Image Search Aragorn Yahoo Image Search Some Disney Snowman Thing Yahoo Image Search Yahoo Image Search (Found when searching for fantasy author stuff) Damn right, Chuck.

via How To Help An Author Funnies (Or Just More Funny Author Memes) — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog