Beating the January Blahs

Getting through January always requires a stack of good books. Here are some winners that have been doing the trick for me.

The Wedding People

The Wedding People, by Alison Espach, was as good as all the hype around it. I saw it on so many blogs last year and was super excited when my turn in the library queue finally came. I went into the book not even knowing the premise, and I was a bit shocked when I found out what Phoebe's intentions were. For those of you living under a rock (as I was!), here's the GoodReads blurb:

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

 In very short order, I found myself rooting for Phoebe as she found herself first clinging to life and then embracing it. I loved how we learned about all the various wedding people through their conversations with Phoebe. In a way, she reminded me of Austen's Anne Eliot in Persuasion--the person everyonr feels comfortable in confiding in. And, I ended up liking all of the wedding people--including the poor Bridezilla and the horrible ex-husband--just proving my maxim that everybody has a story worth hearing. That said, I loved where Phoebe ended up and I hope that Espach follows up the success of this novel with a sequel. 

The Bookseller of Inverness

As part of my Reading Scotland project in anticipation of a planned trip there in September, I devoured The Bookseller of Inverness, by S.G. Maclean. I gave it a solid 5 stars on GoodReads for being a whopping good historical novel, thoroughly researched and chockful of interesting, believable characters, hair-raising adventures, and detailed descriptions of many places I plan to visit this fall. Again, here is the GoodReads blurb:

After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drumossie Moor [1745]. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades.

Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to say what he's searching for and only leaves when Iain closes for the night. The next morning Iain opens up shop and finds the stranger dead, his throat cut, and the murder weapon laid out in front of him - a sword with a white cockade on its hilt, the emblem of the Jacobites.

With no sign of the killer, Iain wonders whether the stranger discovered what he was looking for - and whether he paid for it with his life. He soon finds himself embroiled in a web of deceit and a series of old scores to be settled in the ashes of war.

 The notes at the end by the author provided me with a list of excellent books on the Jacobites. I know I don't have time to read them all, but such wonderful choices to have.

The author has dozens of books listed on GR, some appeal more than others, but the Alexander Seaton series, set in Scotland in the 1620s, looks promising. Has anyone read anything by this author that they can recommend?

Nightshade 

Nightshade (Catalina#1), by Michael Connelly, is the first in a new series, this time featuring a sheriff stationed on the island of Santa Catalina, off the coast of California and opposite LA. This is vintage Connelly--good characters, good mystery, good love-to-hate villains, good action, good side threads...but this time, fantastic setting. I spent half my time reading this book looking for places to stay on Catalina. I would seriously love to go there for a vacation. I think Connelly must have a connection to the island because I remember Mickey Haller (the Lincoln Lawyer) going there with one of his girlfriends after he and his wife divorced. 

Oh...you probably want to know what this one is about. Here's the GR blurb:

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been “exiled” to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor—a Jane Doe identifiable at first only by a streak of purple dye in her hair. At the same time, a report of poaching on a protected reserve turns into a case fraught with violence and danger as Stilwell digs into the shady past of an island bigwig.

Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, Stilwell doggedly works both cases. Though hampered by an old beef with an ex-colleague determined to thwart him at every turn, he is convinced he is the only one who can bring justice to the woman known as “Nightshade.” Soon, his investigation uncovers closely guarded secrets and a dark heart to the serene island that was meant to be his escape from the evils of the big city.

Surviving the Winter

This winter has been mostly mild and dry and windy in Colorado, with just a bit of snow and a few frigid days. We need more or we'll be facing drought conditions this coming summer. 

Go Broncos! I just started watching football two seasons ago, but cheering on the Denver Broncos in the face of all the nay-sayers has been fun. I even bought myself a game-day tee-shirt! Those of you who have visited the Denver airport might recognize, Blucifer, the giant, blue, demon horse that most of us love and that epitomizes the Broncos for me!

Finally watching season five of Only Murders in the Building--we pulled our Hulu subscription after the Jimmy Kimmel kerfuffle but decided Disney had suffered enough and reinstated Hulu to watch Mabel, Charles, and Oliver solve the latest murder in the building. I am absolutely loving Selena Gomez's wardrobe this season. 

Listening to Austen's Mansfield Park in preparation for our region's February discussion of the novel. BTW, I found a free audio version on Audiobooks, courtesy of LibriVox. The reader, Karen Savage, is doing a fine job, although I don't care for her Mary Crawford voice. I plan to scan an annotated version before the meeting in order to find some interesting tidbits to share.

Went to the Denver Art Museum Pissarro exhibit and decided I want to live in most of the places he painted. Here are a couple of favorites:

Best wishes for a successful survival of January. Tell me how you beat the mid-winter blahs.

Dog Days of August Roundup - True Grit, et al

I used to think the perfect year would jump from spring to fall, but lately I am truly starting to appreciate summer. Maybe it's because this one has been relatively cool and much rainier than usual. Anyway, summer is winding down, and it's time for a reading roundup before pumpkin spice hits the shelves and frost hits the tomatoes.

True Grit, by Charles Portis - an absolutely fabulous 5-star read. I loved Mattie Ross, Rooster Cogburn, and LeBoeuf, and I loved the setting (the Old West circa 1870). I especially loved the writing--Mattie is the first-person narrator, and her voice is crisp and authentic with a dry wit. I listened to the audio version, as read by Donna Tartt, who also provided the afterword for the novel. Tartt raves eloquently about her entire family's multi-generational love for this novel, and she also wrote an excellent piece for the New York Times after Portis's death in 2020. I am sorry I didn't read this book as a teenager because I definitely feel I would have had a lifelong love for it, as does Tartt. Even if you're not sure you would like a Western, it's a short book and well worth a try. I actually think it should be on school reading lists. 

I've never seen the John Wayne movie and didn't really want to. However, I did just watch the 2010 movie with Jeff Bridges as Rooster, Matt Damon as LeBoeuf, and Hattie Steinfeld as Mattie. I thought it was fabulous. Very true to the book, snakes and all! I've just put a couple of other books by Portis on my GoodReads TBR list.

The Survivors, by Jane Harper - this Australian author is definitely becoming a favorite of mine. I like everything she writes. This standalone mystery is set in Tasmania, in a stiflingly small seaside village where most people are carrying a load of secrets under a weight of guilt. The perfect setting for a good then-and-now set of mysteries. I loved reading about the deadly caves--spooky and intriguing. Good, interesting characters, and, as always, well-written.

Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel - I never read sci-fi (except the occasional time travel yarn) and I loathe post-apocalyptic distopian stories, but my daughter said Station Eleven was really good and had lots of Shakespeare in it. She reads books that I recommend, so I thought I should do the same. It was really good--and it did have some Shakespeare in it. The post-apocalyptic cast of characters is a troupe of actors who put on Shakespeare's plays and travel with classical musicians who put on concerts in the upper Midwest after a virus destroys civilization and the survivors are attempting to survive. The novel was published in 2014, and anyone who read it before Covid hit was probably even more scared than the rest of us when Covid was in its earliest, scariest phase. I really enjoyed the jumping around in time (we get to know the characters before their world changed), and I especially enjoyed reading about how people viewed the lost world. I really had to swallow a lot to accept the idea that no one who survived could figure out how to turn the lights back on, but the author did a believable job in creating a fictional world I wanted to read about. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I am glad I gave it a shot.

There's a mini-series that my daughter says is very good, and so I will be watching that sometime this Fall if I ever finish watching Castle.

The Last Runaway, by Tracy Chevalier - this was a reread of one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite contemporary authors. Set in 1850, it is the story of a young woman who immigrates to the US and makes her way in the new world, becoming a link in the underground railroad and quilting her way into a place for herself. Rereading this book has inspired me to find a place in my office to set up my sewing machine so that I can finish the quilt I started a few years ago so that I can start on my own underground railroad sampler quilt. Here a link to my original review, complete with references to Austen's Mansfield Park and Gaskell's North and South and the Thornton family, particularly the ladies. I'm happy to say that I saw the parallels on the second reading as well.

Happy Dog Days of Summer!

Austen in August - heads up for review and giveaway

The 3rd annual Austen in August blog event kicked off last Friday, August 1 at Lost Generation Reader.  Thanks to Jenna for hosting what promises to be a really fun reading/blogging experience.

I've signed up to do a review/giveaway on August 26 of The Watsons and Emma Watson: Jane Austen's Unfinished Novel Completed by Joan Aiken.  The giveaway will be open through August 30 and will be available for international as well as U.S. residents.  So mark your calendar so that you can come back and enter the giveaway.  The Watsons is one of Austen's unfinished works and was not published until the 1870s.  Many have speculated as to why Austen never finished it--I've read it a couple of times and read one continuation (by A Lady) but am looking forward to see what Aiken did with it.

I'm also planning to read Jane Austen's First Love, by Syrie James as well as Jane Austen and Names by Maggie Lane.

And I am planning on enjoying reading everyone else's blog posts about my favorite author.

Though it's not part of Austen in August, here's a link to a blog post I did on Mansfield Park when I reread it earlier this year: What is the Matter With Fanny?

Mansfield Park - What is the Matter with Fanny?

Since 2014 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen's most controversial novel, Mansfield Park, I decided to reread it.  Of all the novels, I think I've reread it fewer than any of the others, though I'm probably into the double-digits by now with this one as well.

Usually I say that it's my least favorite Austen novel until I'm actually reading it, and then I'm struck by the wit, the structure, the flawless composition, the characterization and deft turns of phrase and then say how much I like it.  This time I listened to a recording, and while it's often noted that Austen's works shine when read aloud, I found that I was less able to appreciate all its positive attributes because I was focusing on how aggravating Fanny, Edmund, and Mary can be.

The reader did a fine job in representing Mary as a heartless flirt and Edmund as a hopeless drip and Fanny as a passive-aggressive whiner, so good a job in fact that I couldn't really enjoy the story all that much. I think my internal reading voice has been cutting all three of them a tremendous amount of slack over the years!

I still found Henry Crawford deliciously, dangerously attractive, and like Mary, I wish that Fanny had accepted him before that nasty Maria could seduce him into throwing his happiness away with both hands.

I'm actually thinking the character I like best in the book is William Price, Fanny's brother.  He and Susan, her sister, have the most spunk of any of the characters.

So what is the problem with Fanny?  My current feeling is that she is too much like those heroines of the 18th century novel--the delicate, fainting, moralizing creatures that Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth, et al, wrote about.  They may be good girls but stuff happens to them--they don't make stuff happen.  I think Fanny is in this category and her story is just not all that interesting, despite Austen's tremendous storytelling and writing abilities.

For your reading pleasure, here's a link to a short story in my Austen-inspired collection Intimations of Austen, that I was thinking about whilst reading Mansfield Park again: The Three Sisters

I'm so glad that Emma is the next book whose anniversary we get to celebrate. Now there is a heroine who sets things in motion!

Murder at Mansfield Park

For me, Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd, turned out to be two books. The first part is a parallel universe version of Mansfield Park in which Fanny Price is a thoroughly horrible heiress, and the second is an Agatha Christiesque murder mystery in which her murderer is discovered.

It was fun to read a version of Mansfield Park that explores a variety of what-ifs...what if Fanny had not been poor, what if the Crawfords had not been rich, and what if Mrs. Norris had not been childless. Shepherd does a wonderful job of preserving the key scenes and plot points and much of the dialogue of the original Austen story, but these scenes and dialogue are turned on their head with the changed characters making them fun, fresh, and interesting.

As legions of Austen fans who have strugged to like MP over the last 200 years will be pleased to learn, Shepherd gives Mary Crawford the day in the sun she so justly deserves and makes her the heroine, a role she was really born to play. As a reader and a Janeite, I can buy the idea that Mary without money could have tapped into her better attributes than Austen's Mary needed to. In most of the Mansfield Park recreated scenes, Mary ends up playing the role Austen's Fanny plays in the original, but with a bit more spunk.

Much as I enjoyed the first part of the book--the Mansfield Park recreated part--I was mightily relieved when Fanny Price finally showed up dead and Mary could move on to solving the mystery of her murder. I think the book really shone here, and Shepherd has a great start on being a Regency Murder Mystery queen. I loved the thief-taker, Charles Maddox, and hope that Shepherd writes more of his adventures in future novels. He was believeable, well-rounded, and an interesting character whom I would love to get to know better.

As many other reviewers have commented upon, Shepherd's prose is lovely to read. It feels Regency authentic, but not stilted or self-conscious. One passage that I particularly liked is when Mary Crawford, recently reunited with her brother, Henry, after a rather lengthy absence, thinks about their relationship:

Having been alone in the world from such an early age, the two had always relied on each other; her good sense balancing his exuberance, his spirits supporting hers; his pleasantness and gaiety seeing difficulties nowhere, her prudence and discretion ensuring that they had always lived within their means. She perceived on a sudden how much she had missed him, and how different the last weeks would have been had he been there.

I've always been a Henry Crawford fan myself, and Shepherd's Henry is more like Austen's Henry than any of her other doppelgänger characters in Murder at Mansfield Park are like their Austen originals. He has the same charm, energy, and confidence, and having to earn a living suits him, in my opinion. This Henry would have won Austen's Fanny in a heartbeat. In addition to wanting to see more of detective Charles Maddox in future Lynn Shepherd novels, I wouldn't mind seeing more of Henry Crawford too!

Now onto the more difficult part of this review--I honestly wasn't crazy about the ending, which is a bit ironic because Shepherd recently did an interview on another blog about how challenging endings are. I found the ending less than satisfying and not really believeable (i.e., I'm not talking about who dun it but the bit after that). It almost seemed like Shepherd's characters wanted to go in a direction different from the outcome she had pre-determined for them. Just my take on it, and I don't want this to put anyone off the book...it was fun to read, very well-written, and the mystery part absolutely first rate.

Cross-Pollination with Stephanie's Everything Austen

Stephanie of stephanie's written word is doing a giveaway of two, count 'em two, copies of my collection of Austen-inspired short stories entitled Intimations of Austen. This is part of her wonderful Everything Austen reading challenge, which has been sweeping the blogosphere and twitterland. For all of us who read Austen and Austen-inspired on a regular basis, this is a reading challenge made in heaven.

Thanks Stephanie for doing this giveaway.

I do want to take this opportunity to point out that the title is Intimations with an "n" not Imitations with an "m" - I wouldn't presume to imitate Austen, only to be inspired by her! A number of people have made this mistake...hindsight is 20-20 and I probably could've picked a better title.

If you're interested in Intimations of Austen, here are the blurbs I recently wrote about my stories:

Rainbow around the Moon

This is one of the shortest stories in the collection and is a first-person narrative by the daughter of Captain and Anne Eliot Wentworth. Many find it hauntingly beautiful, many find it desperately sad, many find it peaceful and reassuring. I loved writing it. I was driving to work one morning and the opening line, "My father watches the sky" popped into my head. By the time I had finished my commute, I knew that I would be writing a Persuasion story that night. I also remember how much fun I had researching all the expressions that sailors use in predicting weather, starting with the most familiar...red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

The Last Baby

Regarding Austen characters we love to hate, this is one of my favorite stories because it evokes such strong response from readers. It is a Pride and Prejudice-inspired story, a sequel and prequel wrapped up together, and Mrs. Bennet is the heroine! Again, the story began with an opening line that demanded a story be written around it: "My arms are empty."

Bird of Paradise

Once again, this is one of my favorites because so many readers tell me that they absolutely love seeing Fanny Price with an unambiguously happy future. This story begins with the wedding of Fanny and her cousin, Edmund Bertram, and goes gothic when Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca tries to steal the scene. I loved writing it and researching flowers that take awhile to bloom, but when they do, they do so gloriously. My favorite Austen critics have written about how Fanny is one of the most passionate of all Austen heroines, and I wanted to find a story and symbolism that would capture that passion she hid so well while under her Aunt Norris's thumb at Mansfield Park.

All I Do

By far the longest of the stories in this collection, this is a what-if Pride and Prejudice-inspired story that is angst ridden and forces the characters and the readers to address a moral dilemma that has no easy answer. Most readers love this story, but a few are seriously troubled by it. As a writer, I wrestled with the same question that Darcy wrestles with--how can I rid myself of this obligation without compromising my integrity. The story takes place twenty years after Austen's P&P closes, and it was immensely satisfying to write about a mature Elizabeth in middle age. The inspiration for Colonel Fitzwilliam's burial place in this story was Princess Diana's--her death, though it happened several years before I wrote this story, was still fresh in my mind.

Three Sisters

This story was once described as the anti-Persuasion. I won't give away the one-two punch at the end by telling you which Austen novel it's really about, but suffice it to say, I always rather thought that Lady Russell has gotten a bad rap all these years and that she may have had point that Anne Eliot and Austen readers don't like to acknowledge.

The Color of Love

I thought about this story for years before I sat down to write it. One of my brothers sent me an article about Synesthesia, a neurologically based condition in which one sensory path is crossed with another. There are many varieties of Synesthesia, and one that I read about involved reading in color. I found in this a way to explore Darcy's struggle to reconcile his love for Elizabeth Bennet with his own sense of self and family. This story parallels the action of Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but is told entirely from Darcy's perspective as a synesthete.

When Fates Conspire

The last story I wrote for the collection and different from most of the others in tone. This Persuasion story focuses on Captain Wentworth as he approaches Kellynch Hall to visit his sister and her husband. I was in a fanciful mood when I sat down to write this story, and when I got to wondering just what those Fates who play with our fate really look like and sound like pure fancy struck my pen.

Remember That We Are English

A Northanger Abbey story that explores how Henry felt knowing that his father was entirely mistaken about Catherine Morland's family and prospects. One of the threads that runs through most of my stories is that the natural world can heal wounded spirits if you seek solace and wisdom in it, and in this story that thread is given center stage.

Heaven Can Wait

This story was written as the dénouement for a longer work on Marianne Dashwood, post Sense and Sensibility, but I came to love Gideon Hayes, Jane Bennet's original suitor, so much that I had to share it in this collection. Again, this story blends the magic inherent in nature with a character's struggle to move forward, grow, and live and love. I shamelessly borrowed the title from that cute Warren Beatty movie from 1978.

Two Guys Read Jane Austen - Yawn

I confess, I was really looking forward to reading about how Two Guys Read Jane Austen.

I had a nice long flight from Denver to Boston on Sunday, and settled back and read the whole thing cover to cover. I'm glad I'm done with it and can pass it on to someone else. I don't think I'll even bother to shelve it on my miscellaneous Austen shelf (I had been thinking between Fay Weldon's Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (Weldon, Fay) and Kate Fenton's Lions and Licorice,which I just found out is now called Vanity and Vexation: A Novel of Pride and Prejudice.

What didn't I like? Well, for starters reading Austen means reading the lot, not just Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. That's called starting to read Austen. There are only six novels, for goodness sake. I got the feel these two guys were so eager to rush to print (to take advantage, as they acknowledge, of the Austen goldrush) that they read two and decided to call it good enough. But, no Emma? No Persuasion? Not good enough.

And frankly, they could have dispensed with the college-prank stories, the rehab stories, the plugging-their-other-books stories, and the wife stories. Publishing their letters is a nice gimmick, but how many times do I need to read "Give my love to Miranda" to get the effect of the letters-between-friends bit? When I read a book about Austen, I want it to be about Austen. I found myself skimming the non-Austen stuff looking for more Austen stuff.

The one bright spot was when one of them--and I never really tried to keep straight which one was talking--gave a reasonably good explanation for why Austen chose Henry VIII as the play from which Henry Crawford read and that Lady Bertram labels Crawford as quite a good actor.

They're probably looking for speaking opportunities now that they're Austen "experts" and they're a novelty in that they are beer-drinking guys who like to talk Austen. If they come to my neck of the woods, I might give them another chance, but I thought the book a trifle dull.