Books and Movies

Since last week, I gave up on Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego. Any book that I’m forcing myself to read is not worth what little reading time I have.

I finished The Professors’ Wives’ Club by Joanne Rendell. I liked it, but not enough to want to write a review.

I also finished A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King, which I loved and did review.

I wrote a post on some of the books I’m thankful I found this year.

I read short story number three for the 100 Shots of Short Challenge.

I also joined The Art History Reading Challenge for next year, and compiled all of 2009’s Reading Challenges into one page.

I’m currently reading:

Irish Girls Are Back in Town

Like any short story collection, I like some and some are just okay. I’m looking forward to the entry by Cecilia Ahern.

I also started:

Blindspot by Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore

I am loving this book! I was sent an ARC (the release date is December 9th), and it sat in the stack for a while. The story is told by two different narrators. Fanny Easton tells her story in letters to her friend, Lizzie. Stewart Jameson tells his as if he is speaking to the reader. Both have an individual and entertaining voice. The two find themselves in Boston in 1764, a hotbed of rebellion against the British king. Jameson is a portrait painter who escaped from his creditors in Edinburgh and is hoping to establish himself in Boston, without his history being found out. Fanny is a young lady - a fallen woman - who, of necessity, is posing as Jameson’s male apprentice, Francis Weston. The writing style is humorous, almost sly, especially the portions narrated by Jameson. I only wish I had more time to read it!

What are you reading this Sunday?

Sarah is hosting The Art History Reading Challenge. The challenge is to read six books that are about art during 2009. Genre doesn’t matter: fiction, non-fiction, graphic novel - as long as it is somehow about art, it counts. These are my six choices:

1. Leonardo’s Swans by Karen Essex
2. The Sense of Paper by Taylor Holden
3. Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland
4. The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
5. Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
6. The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe

I added a page on the sidebar called Reading Challenges for 2009, where I will track all of my reading challenges next year.

Title: Ghosts
Author: Edwidge Danticat, author of The Dew Breaker
Source: The New Yorker - read it online
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-born American author. I listened to the audiobook version of her novel, The Dew Breaker, earlier this year. She writes about the Haitian experience with a voice who knows. This short story, Ghosts, is about a young man, Pascal, living in Haiti. His parents run a restaurant, and Pascal comes into contact with the gang leader Tiye in the restaurant. Pascal works at a radio station, and he has an idea for a series talking about the realities of gang life. When the station manager steals his idea, Pascal’s gang friends take matters into their own hands.

I don’t know what it is about the short story format, or maybe it’s just the ones that The New Yorker chooses, but I’ve yet to read one that leaves me with hope. They are beautifully written, but seem to shine a spotlight on the worst of humanity, and tend to leave the characters in the same or worse condition than where they began. I’m looking forward to reading one that gives me a brighter look a the world.

Get your own at Wordle. Hat tip: Moomin Light.

Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos

“Broken for You is the kind of book that breaks your heart when it ends, and yet you can’t read more slowly during the last few chapters, because you don’t want the words to stop coming.” Read the rest of my review.

The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L’Engle

“Madeleine L’Engle was truly a remarkable woman, and her poetry is beautiful and haunting and joyous and funny and all the things you could possibly want poetry to be.” Read the rest of my review.

Tigerheart by Peter David

“This book is everything you could possibly want in a novel: adventure, magic, love, danger, truth, tragedy, and triumph. The best thing is that this is a children’s novel in the same way that the Harry Potter books are “children’s books.” By which I mean that anyone who loves a good story will appreciate this book.” Read the rest of my review.

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

“The Host asks the question: What does it mean to be human? It explores the bounds of love and loyalty and self-sacrifice, and examines what is best and worst about the human race. It’s a love story in the best possible way.” Read the rest of my review.

Guernica by Dave Boling

“Boling is a natural as a writer of historical fiction, as he introduces characters that live and breathe on the pages of his book. Justo and Mariangeles; their daughter Miren; Miguel and Dodo, the fisherman’s sons; the blind soapmaker Alaia; Father Xabier, Justo’s brother and an advisor to Spain’s beleaguered President Aguirre - all of these people bring the events of history to life and make the devastation of Guernica personal.” Read the rest of my review.

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski

“So what happened to make Martiya decide to kill David, the Walkers’ son? Mischa peels back layer by layer of the mystery, and as he does, the story gets more and more enthralling, until I couldn’t put it down until I knew.” Read the rest of my review.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King

“King does a fantastic job of writing character and setting, and I was so enjoying the interaction between Holmes and Russell that I hated it when the book ended. I put the sequel on hold at the library.” Read the rest of my review.

North River by Pete Hamill

“Hamill’s novel is about this man, this woman, and this child. It’s about learning to let go of the past. It’s about accepting the rotten deal life has handed you and living anyway. And it’s a wonderful and authentic love story, that shows love and attraction in all of its messy, complicated, delicious glory. I adored this book.” Read the rest of my review.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King is the third book in the Mary Russell mystery series. It continues some of the themes of book two, A Monstrous Regiment of Women (my review), including the place of women in religion and the rights of women.

My review will include a spoiler, but I knew this spoiler before I read book two or three and it didn’t diminish the reading experience for me. If you are concerned that it will for you, though, then please skip the rest of the review and just know that I loved this book as much as the first two.

Book three finds Mary and Holmes in the third year of their marriage, and they have settled into a comfortable routine. Mary does her studying - working on her research into theology and women - and Holmes does his chemical experiments, trying to come up with more and better ways of studying crime scene evidence. They are happy together, though Mary has begun to recognize the signs that Holmes is restless and bored, and needs a case.

A case is dropped into their laps when a female archaeologist friend of Mary’s stops by and gives Mary a papyrus that appears to be a letter written by Mary Magdalene. The truly astonishing thing about the document, though, is that Mary identifies herself as “an apostle of Jesus.” Mary Russell knows the tremors this find could cause in the male-dominated religious world of the 1920s, and is unsure of what to do with this find.

That decision is put on the shelf when Mary’s archaeologist friend is murdered. Holmes and Mary take on the case, with three possible suspects - the woman’s own sister, a misogynistic British colonel, or a Palestinian family who disliked the woman’s Zionist affiliation.

Ms. King starts the book with the pair already married, and instead of telling us what married life is like for the two of them, she shows us during the course of this case. Mary and Holmes are so naturally suited for each other that I’m surprised I didn’t realize where the series was going when I read the first book. Aside from their considerable age difference, they are truly two halves of a whole.

This book was just as enjoyable and unputdownable as the first two, and I now officially have a new favorite mystery series. I was smarter this time, and put book four on hold before I’d even finished this one. It came into the library yesterday, and with a long holiday weekend ahead of me, I will have lots of time to savor it.

5 out of 5 stars

The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego

Office and a little storage space is all he needs, the mafioso murmured. He waved a hand to a young man who’d sat silently at the table through all five courses of lunch, and the young man opened a briefcase and placed some papers on the table next to the calamari.

A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King

“Quite,” his brother said with an admirable lack of concern, and heaved himself upright. He padded out of the room and returned a short time later with a huge and, I was relieved to see, well-oiled pistol, which he handed to Holmes along with a box of ammunition sufficient to withstand a minor invasion of the southern coast.

If you play along, be sure to leave your link at Should Be Reading.

I am in California, among a family of Italian immigrants, and frankly, I don’t like anyone in my family. Not sure if I’ll continue spending time in this particular book.

But, on the up side, I am also in a little ‘burb of London, posing as an unassuming and naive secretary for a general. I am beginning to think he had a hand in the murder of a female archaeologist friend of mine, who found a papyrus that appears to be a letter from Mary Magdalene.

If you play along, be sure to leave a link at An Adventure in Reading.

Rebecca at Just One More Page is the new host of Musing Mondays. Be sure to click over to read everyone else’s contributions and to add your own.

Rebecca asks us how we feel about reading phenomenons, like Harry Potter and Twilight.

I’m not influenced so much by the fad and all the hype as I am by trusted book bloggers who read and vouch for the hyped books. Case in point: Twilight. After the first several reviews I read, I was still unconvinced. I’ve never been into vampire stories, and this just didn’t seem like my cup of tea. But then a couple of reviewers whose taste is very similar to mine wrote positive reviews, and talked about how the books are so much more than simply vampire stories. So, I decided to jump in and find out if the books were worth the hype.

And, for me at least, they were. My daughter and I are waiting with baited breath for the film to make it to our little rural community’s one-screen theater. Maybe next weekend!

I finished The Grift by Debra Ginsberg, and I ended up really liking it (my review). I joined three reading challenges for next year. And I finally got around to updating my Reviews by Author and Reviews by Title pages - you can search alphabetically for authors or titles of interest. I also updated my Review Policy, what with all the hullabaloo about negative reviews recently.

Along with those housekeeping items and some freelance writing assignments, I have found some time to read. I’m still making headway in The Islands of Divine Music, but it’s not a can’t-put-it-down kind of book. It seems more like inter-connected short stories. Which isn’t to say it isn’t good, just not engrossing.

I also started The Professors’ Wives’ Club by Joanne Rendell. I find the writing a little awkward - especially in the descriptions, lots of telling instead of showing - but I’m enjoying the characters enough that I’m going to stick with it. So far.

My name finally made it to the top of the library hold list for the third Mary Russell novel by Laurie King, A Letter of Mary. It’s just as enthralling as the first two.

So, what are you reading this Sunday?

The USA Network has come up with two of our all-time favorite series, Monk and Psych, and we weren’t disappointed with their newest offering, Burn Notice. Jeffery Donovan stars as Michael Westen, a government agent who has had a “burn notice” issued on him - which basically means he’s not to be contacted, dealt with, or helped. He’s out - with no resources, and no idea who burned him. Michael ends up in Miami, his home town, where he starts to dig into the clues leading to the person who ruined his career. Along the way, he takes on private investigations and security cases, with the help of his ex-girlfriend, Fiona (played by Gabrielle Anwar), who also happens to be an ex-IRA weapons dealer, and his fellow agent, Sam, who is informing on Michael to the FBI. Throw in Sharon Gless as Michael’s mom, and you’ve got a great cast with perfect chemistry. Like Monk and Psych, the chemistry and comedy are equally as important as the mysteries. Don’t let Fiona’s horrible Lucky Charms Irish accent in the pilot discourage you from watching; she ditches it in the second episode.

We watched the first two seasons of The Unit on TV as they aired. My dad would record them for us while we recorded House for him. He decided he didn’t like it that much, so we had to stop watching, cause nothing comes between House and I. But now that season 3 is available on DVD, we’re catching up. Dennis Haysbert has been a favorite of mine since the very short-lived series Now and Again (anyone else remember that one?), which co-starred Eric Close, star of Without a Trace. Then, of course, Haysbert was everyone’s favorite president, David Palmer, on 24. On The Unit, which is based on the memoir Inside Delta Force, Haysbert is the leader of an elite force of Army Rangers who go on covert missions to keep our country safe. The stories of the wives and families living on base is also told, and the supporting cast is mostly terrific. My favorite is the character Mack, played by Max Martini:

Doesn’t he remind you a little of Sean Bean…… Ahem. Back on track.

Anyway, thanks to Netflix, we’re catching up on these series. What have you been watching lately?