The Sunday Salon

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Finally, my crazy work week has ended. 🙂 After a few evenings of naps before bed and a late morning on Saturday, I think I might be human again. What I’m really excited about is having my alarm clock on a more reasonable setting. As far as I’m concerned, there is absolutely no reason in the world to get up at 5 AM unless something great is going to happen. Work does not qualify for the great category. Is it obvious I’m not a morning person…

I didn’t get much reading done over the last week but I did manage to finish up The Swan Thieves and get several chapters into Persuasion by Jane Austen.

So many people loved The Swan Thieves and I wanted to also and while I didn’t not love it, I didn’t really love it. Does that make sense? Probably not. Allow me a moment to explain. My hopes were very high for this book. I’ve read and loved Kostova’s other book, The Historian, so I was ready for a long meandering story filled with wondrous and beautiful characters and places. I found instead a few people that I had no attraction to. They were nice and even lovely and illuminating in some instances but, in the end, it was sort of like a date that was nice but there was no chemistry.

Yesterday I started Persuasion by Jane Austen. I love my Jane Austen, especially Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice (two of my favorite books), but there are several of her works that I have not read and this year they are all on my list. My husband was kind enough to download The Complete Works of Jane Austen to my Nook when I wasn’t looking and we spent Saturday afternoon sitting outside reading. It was an excellent day.

Today we are having brunch with a few friends and I hope to get in a bit more of Persuasion. It’s moving fast and, as always, I’m thoroughly enjoying the antics of her characters.

Well, I think that’s it for today. I’ve got some blog reading to do, some email to sort through, and some time to spend curled up on the couch with my book. Happy Sunday!

My Favorite Reads – Gone With the Wind

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Alyce from At Home With Books features one of her favorite reads each Thursday and this week my pick is…

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

Gone With the Wind

The summary from Wikipedia: Gone With the Wind, first published in May 1936, is a romantic novel and the only novel written by Margaret Mitchell. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia and Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War and Reconstruction and depicts the experiences of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner. The novel is the source of the extremely popular 1939 film of the same name.

I read Gone With the Wind for the first time last year. The book came to live with me via my sister. Back in college, my sister had an elderly neighbor she used to help out with groceries and other things. One day, the woman was cleaning out some bookshelves and asked my sister if she would like any of the books. My sister spied the copy of Gone With the Wind and asked if she could have that one knowing how I loved old books. It turned out to be a first edition book club release from 1936 with the original book cover. It’s in pristine condition. I think I put off reading it for so long for that reason — I was afraid of ruining the book.

While perusing the shelves one day for my next read I came across it again and decided that if I was very careful, reading it would not ruin it and, really, it was just begging to be read. It was easily one of the best books, and probably close to one of the longest, I think I’ve read. (My version is over 800 pages long and each page is a double column layout.) I stayed up late every night to read and even though my eyelids were falling, I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, stop reading. Scarlett O’Hara is one of the most wonderful, annoying, and clever characters ever to grace a page. It can also be infuriating to read as attitudes of characters can sound very barbaric.  That aside, it’s certainly a great book and one that should be read by everyone, at the very least as a character study, as Mitchell truly has a way of creating unforgettable sketches and a plot worthy of her heroine.

Teaser Tuesdays

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to give everyone a look inside the book you’re reading.

1.) Grab your current read

2.) Open to a random page

3.) Share two teaser sentences from that page

4.) Share the title and author so that other participants know what you’re reading.

This week, The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova.

“The room itself looked as if its occupant had left it on impulse: a heap of paint-hardened brushes — good brushes, wasted — and a stained rag rested on the table. He had not even finished cleaning up, my patient who showered and shaved daily in the heart of an institution. His former wife stood in the middle of the room, the sun touching her sand-dune hair. She glowed with sunlight, with young beauty beginning to ebb, and — I thought — with anger.”

The Swan Thieves, page 124.

Many people loved this book and I couldn’t wait to read it. While I can’t say I’m not enjoying it, it’s moving very slow for me. It could be me right now with the work-hobbled brain but I’m going to reserve judgment for the end.

What are you teasing us with this week?

The Sunday Salon

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It’s been a slow week of reading for me.  I finished only one book and haven’t read much of another.  Work has been very busy and I’m not sure this week will be any better on the reading front.  It’s annual conference season and my company has several big events going on this week which means a few very late nights and many early mornings for me.  I’m not a morning person so I’m really not looking forward to this week at all.

The round up this week.  I read — The Ark by Boyd Morrison

I also started The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova.  It’s moving very slow for me but I can’t tell if it’s the book or me.  I’ll admit it; my brain has been ruined by work this week.  I’m hopeful a few brain cells which have flown the cranium due to overwork will return when all the work craziness has stopped.

I was checking my blog feeds earlier today and realized I haven’t had much of a chance to keep up with anyone this week and next week doesn’t look very hopeful either.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that my postings will be light this week since I don’t think I’m going to have much left at the end of the day.  My only saving grace is that I hope to get a bit of reading in while waiting around for things to happen.  Oh, how I need a vacation…

Happy Sunday everyone.

PS – Happy Mother’s Day mom! 🙂

The Tale of Halcyon Crane

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The Tale of Halcyon Crane

The Tale of Halcyon Crane

By Wendy Webb

Holt Paperbacks

ISBN:978-0805091403

4.5 stars

One morning, Hallie James finds her life forever changed by a simple letter. The letter states that she has been left everything by her mother — a woman Hallie thought was already dead.

She decides to confront her father, the man who raised her and a person she has great respect for but is suffering from dementia and now barely remembers her on good days. She knows she can’t ask anyone else and needs to know the truth — did her mother really die in the fire like her father told her? When Hallie tells him about the letter his response is simple and startling, “Madyln wrote to you?” Hallie had always thought her mother’s name was Annie.

When Hallie’s father passes away and she is left to not only deal with the death of the father who loved and raised her but the death of a mother she didn’t know and can’t remember. On a whim she calls the attorney, packs a bag, and travels to the island her mother called home.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s categorized as horror, which I was surprised by. I don’t read much horror and, while this one had a supernatural, creepy factor to it, wasn’t terrifying in the way I think of horror.

It moves fast and the whole time you’re wondering where it will lead. Hallie’s family stories told to her by an ancient housekeeper who seems otherworldly weave a good mystery. Webb doesn’t let too much slip and the twist at the end is a nice reward for the reader. On the downside, the story seemed to rush to the end for me but it may have simply been my reluctance to see it end. I do think it could have benefited from a few extra pages just to add more details though. Several things end up taking place way too fast without much explanation as to why. But it didn’t take anything a way from the story. The ghosts, supernatural events, and an old Victorian house full of secrets keep the story moving.

This is Webb’s first novel and I can’t wait to see what her next offering holds.

In addition to this blog, I also do reviews for The Book Reporter website. The above is a summary of my review, which can be read in full here. The book was provided to me by the publisher for The Book Reporter review.

My Favorite Reads – The Forsyte Saga

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Alyce from At Home With Books features one of her favorite reads each Thursday and this week my pick is…

The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy.

The Forsyte Saga

From the back cover: The Forsyte Saga is John Galsworthy’s monumental chronicle of the lives of the moneyed Forsytes, a family whose values are constantly at war with its passions. The story of Soames Forsyte’s marriage to the beautiful and rebellious Irene, and its effects upon the whole Forsyte clan, The Forsyte Saga is a brilliant social satire of the acquisitive sensibilities of a comfort-bound class in its final glory. Galsworthy spares none of his characters, revealing their weaknesses and shortcomings as clearly as he does the tenacity and perseverance that define the strongest members of the Forsyte family.

My edition contains all three novels: The Man of Property, In Chancery, and To Let as well as a few interludes including Indian Summer of a Forsyte and Awakening. It’s a monster of a book at 878 pages. It also has a rather large and complicated family tree at the beginning which is still dog-eared for easy reference.

Several years ago, at least 8, maybe 9, PBS aired The Forsyte Saga mini-series and a few of us decided that we should read along with the mini-series. I cheated and pretty much kept reading while everyone else waited for the series to air. I didn’t expect to get sucked in to the lives and loves of this family but something wouldn’t let me stop reading. I remember being thoroughly disappointed when I got to the last page. Even after the marathon that it had been, I wanted more. To this day, I still regard this book as one of my favorites. There was something just so lovely about the writing, the setting, and also very juicy since all the dirty laundry of this prestigious, well-known, rich family was being aired. Oh, the drama.

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

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The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

By Kelly O’Connor McNees

Amy Einhorn Books

ISBN: 0399156526

4.5 stars

There is nothing that Louisa May Alcott wants more than independence and the opportunity to prove herself as a writer. She yearns for a small room all her own and stacks of paper waiting to be covered with ink. What she gets is a rundown house, housework, a father who is blind to the basic needs of his family, a depressed mother, and resentment. She chafes against societal conventions — marriage, love, and the idea of a woman’s place. When she finds herself feeling emotions for a man, she struggles to balance those feelings with her dreams and wonders if it would actually be possible to have both.

The character of Louisa May Alcott was all I expected her to be in this book. She’s strong-willed, fitful, passionate, witty, and observant. She sees the sham of a marriage her parents are engaged in and refuses to let herself fall into that same trap. She wants, and craves, freedom above all and stays true to her dreams. Which can be infuriating to read sometimes since she does preach and selfishly believe that what she wants is right and that no one can, or will, stop her from having what she wants in the end. She gets what she wants, but she does pay a price for it.

Her father is uncaring and generally stupid to his own family’s needs. When I say needs, I don’t mean in terms of frivolous things such as ribbons for adornment — it’s food, clothing, and shelter that he seems to think will just fall out of the sky. He has put their lives in danger and at one time even suggested an open marriage and divorce using some flimsy transcendentalist thought that made no sense to anyone but him. He’s infuriating and in many ways I wanted his family to leave him yet they persist in caring for him throughout their lives.

Little Women is one of my favorite books. I’ve been wanting to re-read it for some time now and thanks to this book I think I will be doing that very soon. McNees is a good writer and I hope to read more of her books in the future. She did a great job here and while I know that the imagined life of an author can be a difficult thing to write, I think she did a stand up job. She brought to life a person, and a family, with grace, good humor, and some great writing.

I received this book through the Early Reviewer program on LibraryThing.

Teaser Tuesdays

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to give everyone a look inside the book you’re reading.

1.) Grab your current read

2.) Open to a random page

3.) Share two teaser sentences from that page

4.) Share the title and author so that other participants know what you’re reading.

“As he followed Miles back to the specially equipped van he coulf roll into with his iBOT and drive, Tyler for once wished his problems were as mundane as talking with attorneys about settling lawsuits. Instead, all he had to do in the next day was come up with a way to find Noah’s Ark, an archeological treasure that had been hidden since the beginning of recorded history, while preventing the deaths of virtually every person on earth.

No pressure.”

The Ark by Boyd Morrison, pages 189 – 190.

The Ark

What are you teasing us with this week?