Hopelessly Devoted to You

Today I'm taking you back to Keeneston.  I did warn you right?  Ms Brooks' newest book, Forever Devoted, released less than twelve hours ago, and it was amazing.  It ties together so many threads, introduces us to some new characters, and finally fills in a few secrets--or at least gives us a hint or two!

Layne Davies is the only child of the eldest Davies brother, Miles, and his wife Morgan.  She is a physical therapist and works closely with veterans.  She's looking forward to a break from her family when she heads off to a conference in Charleston, South Carolina.  What she isn't expecting is for an incredibly hot new patient to fall into her lap.

Walker Green is a member of what civilians know as SEAL Team Six--the badasses of the SEALs.  While on a mission in the Atlantic, he is betrayed by his commanding officer and watches his team die.  In a desperate act to save himself, he jumps into the ocean where he manages to survive for seven days with an infected injury.  He's rescued by a Greek ship, and the doctor on board helps him as much as he can.  When the ship comes in to dock in South Carolina, Walker slips overboard and home to Shadow's Landing and his friend Gavin Faulkner's house.

Gavin, like everyone else, believes that Walker is dead, but when his best friend shows up and tells his story, he jumps into action.  He calls in the cousins (much like the Davies clan, more on that in a minute), and together they come to the agreement that Walker needs somewhere to hide.  Gavin, a doctor, thinks of Layne Davies.  Layne is his estranged cousin--Marcy Davies is his great-aunt.  Now, the Davies and Faulkner clans have been estranged since the late sixties.  Marcy, in love with Jake Davies, chose to stay in Kentucky when her parents moved to South Carolina to support her brothers and their military careers.  Mother Faulkner (love the play on words) expected Marcy to take care of her and her husband in their old age, and spread her poison, making the Faulkners believe that Marcy spurned the whole side of the family.  It all works out in the end and there is warm fuzzies all around.  The introduction of the Faulkners, who we haven't seen since Bluegrass Dawn, opens up an entire new series, the first book of which comes this year!  Anyway.  Placing Walker with Layne seems like the perfect idea--Layne can hide him and help him recover from his wounds, and no one will suspect because of the Davies/Faulkner estrangement.

It's not that simple.

There is instant attraction between Walker and Layne, but the Frogman (Walker) will also have to survive Miles.  And his brothers.  And the Davies cousins and cousins-in-law.  Who is going to be the biggest badass?  (Hint.  It's not anyone male.)  But Walker's former commander is hunting the only many who has proof of his betrayal.  He is not above doing what ever he deems necessary to kill Walker, and that includes kidnapping and threatening to kill Walker's sister and Layne herself.  Little does he know that Layne herself is deadly--Her father taught her how to kill someone with her pinky when she was twelve.  Not going to lie, this book is also winning for my favorite marriage proposal.

As for the secrets--we learn more about Father Ben.  We get a small hint as to his past, something the young priest keeps hidden under his collar.  We also find out who Reagan is dating!  Many of us had the correct suspicion, but it's always nice to get it right.  I created a new theory about the panty dropper too!  There were a couple of things that bummed me out too.  Like always, I wanted the book to be longer.  I read it in about an hour and a half, and I'm rereading again already, but I always want more.  I'm also sad we didn't see more of the Rose Sisters or the town.  We saw a lot of the Davies family, and a little of Keeneston, but Layne and Walker felt really isolated without the interference of Keeneston.  Aniyah definitely was some great comic relief.  I know that realistically, we aren't going to see everyone in every book, but this one didn't even have a Henry Rooney Pick Up Line™. 

All in all, though, it was another great book.  The next book, Forever Hunted will be out in late April/early May, so it's not too long to wait!

The Red Tent

I try very hard not to use the title of a book for the title of the blog post about that book, but in the case of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, I couldn't think of anything better.  Not because I didn't like the book or I didn't feel creative, but because the red tent of the book is a symbol for many of the things that I absolutely loved about this book.

The Red Tent has been on my radar for a while, and on my bookshelf for maybe a year and a half or so now.  I know that's a ridiculous time to sit on a bookshelf, but I very often have to be in the right mood for a certain kind of book, and I knew that this was going to be one of those books.  In many ways, I'm glad I waited.  Where I am in my life right now, what I'm feeling--this book made me confront a lot of those emotions.  It reminded me that there are good things in life, and there are bad.  That there are things that happen that you can forgive, and things that you can't, and even when you can't forgive, you can learn to accept.  You can see how one situation can change how many people feel about something.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The story of Jacob and his beloved, Rachel, along with her sister Leah, is one that is very familiar to me.  In one of my favorite movies, One Night with the King, Esther tells the king their story.  The story of Joseph is also quite easy to recall, thanks to such productions as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat or the movie King of Dreams.  In all the tellings of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, in the tellings of Joseph, I didn't know that Jacob had a daughter.

Dinah is mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and her story is used as a kind of "fear the strangers" type warning.  She goes to Sekhmet and either marries and sleeps with or is raped by a prince of the city.  Jacob demands the circumcision of the men of the city as payment, and two days after the ceremony, as the men are recovering, they are slaughtered by the sons of Jacob.  After that, she kind of falls out of the narrative.

With The Red Tent, Anita Diamant has created a story between the lines of that story, and expanded it to give Dinah a past, a future, and a legacy beyond one of blood and betrayal.  But the book is more than just Dinah's story.  It's a story of women, of sisters, wives, daughters, friends, and enemies.  It's a story about how women have a different understanding of birth, life, and death.  The soul of this book lies in the relationships between women.

Dinah, as narrator, starts by telling her mother and aunts' stories.  She tells how Jacob came to Laban's home and fell instantly in love with Rachel.  But she also tells how he fell more slowly for Leah.  When Rachel is afraid of her marriage night, Leah takes her place.  This will create resentment between the sisters, but they are able to come together.  She tells of how Leah was incredibly fertile (she had eight living children, seven boys and Dinah) but Rachel could not concieve and carry a baby.  So it also becomes the story of Bilhah, who pledges to carry a child for Rachel and of Zilpah, who bears twins when Leah needs to rest.  Dinah tells of each of her mother-aunts skills and beauty, but of their faults as well.  When Dinah is finally born, the women are estatic to have a daughter to carry their stories.  The stories of the four wives of Jacob are just as important as Dinah's, because the relationships in this world of women shape who Dinah is.  For instance, if Rachel had not been a midwife, it is unlikely that Dinah would have been.

When Dinah tells her own story, it feels short in comparison to her mother-aunts'.  Dinah is in love with Shalem, the Sekhmet prince she marries.  Simon and Levi, her second and third oldest brothers, murder the men of the city without their father's knowledge.  At the death of her beloved, Dinah curses the house of Jacob and leaves them. She travels with her mother in law, Re-Nefer to Thebes, where she bears a son.  Re-Nefer claims Dinah's child as her own, and Dinah is lost for many years.  Eventually, thanks to Meryt, Dinah begins to live again, and to serve as a midwife, something she hadn't done for many years.  She even remarries, although she bears no other children.

But Dinah must face her past, and that happens when her son, in the employ of the powerful Zafenat-Paneh-ah, comes to beg her help on behalf of his master's wife.  Dinah goes to help the woman, and discovers that the powerful vizier is her brother, Joseph.  As milk-siblings, and being only a few months apart in age, they had been very close as children.  Dinah had not known her brother's fate.  At the same time, she cannot forgive a son of Jacob who, to her, stood by as her future had been killed.  Dinah finally gets closure when she travels to her father's home as he is dying.  She does not go to see Jacob, but to see the lives of her brothers, and their children and grandchildren--the fruits of her mothers, long since dead.  When one of her nieces sits down and tells her the story of the many children, she also brings up the story of Dinah.  While her niece does not know Dinah's fate (or that she is, in fact, talking to the subject of her story), she shares that Dinah's name is remembered, as is the travesty that befell her.  This brings Dinah peace.

And that's the end of the story.  Normally, I wouldn't tell you how it ends, to encourage you to read the book for  yourself, but in this case, I felt I had to.  It's the lesson in the end, for me, that makes all the tears I shed reading this book worth it (I'm having an emotional week.  I don't think I'd have cried so much otherwise, don't worry!).  Forgiveness comes in many guises.  Sometimes, it only comes in acceptance of what happened.  In that case, you don't necessarily forgive the person who harmed you, but you forgive yourself for things that only make sense to you.  For holding that grudge.  For not being able to forgive.  I don't know.

I also think this is a great book for any feminist to read because it emphasizes the power of women.  It may seem--thanks to the fact that they so rarely appear with full, fleshed out stories--that women of Biblical times had no power, but they did.  The power they held was just intrinsically different than what the men of the Bible held.  Even today, I think it's important to remember that yes, women and men should be treated equally in all things, but there are some things that men are more capable of, and have an easier understanding of, and some things that women have the easier understanding of.  Equal doesn't always have to mean the same.  Yes, two quarters are equal.  But, a two dimes and a nickle are also equal to a quarter.  They're worth the same, but they are different.

I really hope, man or woman, you read this book.  It's a truly wonderful, humanizing look at some of the popular Biblical characters.  While it is a work of fiction, it makes many people, such as Rachel, Leah, and Jacob, as Issac and Rebecca, as Joseph, to appear more real.  They weren't perfect, but they were real.

The book has also been made into a mini series starring Iain Glen as Jacob and Rebecca Ferguson as
Dinah.

A Tale of More Woe

When any book starts with the line "They say that I died," you know it's going to be a good book.  That's the first line from Juliet by Anne Fortier.  And no, before you start rolling  your eyes, this is not a retelling of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet from Juliet's point of view.  It has similarities and it mentions the play, but this is a very different book.

The story of Romeo and Juliet is much older than William Shakespeare.  There are tales of forbidden love going back centuries, but this particular story traces back to the fourteenth century, and Siena rather than Verona.  Part of Fortier's novel is her depiction of the old tale; the "original."  There are two dueling families, the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis, but Romeo belongs to neither family.  He is a Marescotti and he saves Gulietta Tolomei from Salimbeni cutthroats.  She is, at the time, playing dead and trying to safely make it to her uncle's home after her family is slaughtered by Salimbenis.  Romeo sees her "corpse" and falls in love with her beauty.  She in turn, falls for him but begs revenge against Salimbeni.  Later she comes to her senses and tells Romeo that he doesn't have to kill Salimbeni to claim her.  She loves him as she is.  However, Gulietta's uncle has a different solution for the feud:  He's going to marry Gulietta to Salimbeni.  Needless to say, Gulietta is not okay with this situation.  I don't want to give away the end of the original sotry.

In the modern day, the main character is another Gulietta Tolomei, but she was raised as Julie Jacobs, not knowing who she was, for her own safety.  When her beloved Aunt Rose dies and seemingly leaves everything to Julie's obnoxious twin, Janice (who is really Gianozza Tolomei, just as the original Gulietta had a twin), Julie heads off to Siena to find a treasure that her mother left for her.  There, Gulietta runs into all kinds of crazy.  On the plane she meets Eva Maria Salimbeni who turns into a bit of a fairy godmother for Gulietta.  Once landed in Siena, Eva Maria introduces Gulietta to her godson, Alessandro Santini.  In the search for the treasure that her mother left, Gulietta learns the history of Siena and it's contrada, the history of her family, and the truth of Romeo and Guiletta until, buried under Siena, she comes face to face with the truth of the story.

I will be the first to admit that I have a problem with Shakespeare's play.  Many people talk about the play as an epic love story.  It's the story of two teenagers who couldn't control themselves and caused the deaths of, if I remember correctly, six people in less than a week.  How is that an epic love story at all?  It's insane!  But the way the story is presented by Fortier is not only a bit more believable but a beautiful representation of love, loyalty, betrayal, and truth. 

In a series of reading group questions that I found, I found one question that stuck out to me.  Once she learns of it, modern day Guiletta seems be believe in the curse set by her ancestors.  Was there actually a curse, or did all the parties involved simply believe that they were cursed?  It's not really clear either way, but it speaks of the power of belief.  A technique that I use all the time when I tutor is telling my students to tell themselves that they are going to have a good day, particularly when they come in in a bad mood.  Within ten minutes, they're smiling and happy.  Belief is an incredible thing.

Anyway.  I would really suggest this book whether or not you actually like Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  While there is a love story in the book, it's much much more of an adventure story than a romance.  There's also a mystery in the hunt for Juliet's Eyes.  Will Gulietta and her Romeo finally get a happy ending?

I've also included a gorgeous picture of Siena because why not?  Go visit!

A Rose by Any Other Name

You've seen me write about Kathleen Brooks before, and I hope you never get tired of it because, quite honestly, you will get a new post every time there's a new release.  (TIP:  There's a new release on January 30th so be on the lookout.  I even have that day off.)  Today I'm going back to what is probably my favorite of all the Bluegrass books from any of the collections.  It's actually one of the Bluegrass Singles, a standalone book that was published after the Bluegrass Brothers series and before the Forever Bluegrass series.

The Keeneston Roses finally tells the story of the town fairy godmothers:  Lily Rae, Daisy Mae and Violet Fae Rose.  When we fall in love with them, they're in their sixties and well established in the town.  But how did they come to be the Roses?  How did three women who love families and love end up as three old maids?

They each had their heart broken.

The book takes us to after the War.  I'm pretty sure the reference is to World War II, because of timing from the other books.  The three perfect Rose triplets are growing up in small-town Keeneston, and each has their own dream.  Their father owns the local pharmacy and their mother is a well respected matron.  Lily falls first, and she falls for the boy next door.  It turns out that the boy next door is not as nice as he seems.  At the climax of Lily's broken heart, the sisters are armed with their typical weapons: a broom, a wooden spoon, and a spatula.  Daisy falls next, for a nice young man who is later involved in the Vietnam War.  He dangles her for years before finally breaking her heart.  Violet follows her dreams to culinary school in France where she falls for her teacher.... Who later turns out to be a real jerk.

What happens after each of the Roses gets their heart broken is what makes this story great.  Although they each give up on love for themselves, they dedicate their lives to helping others find love.  And they are incredibly successful!  They pair people up with few, if any, inaccuracies, like they have a sixth sense about who belongs together.  In the Forever Bluegrass series, they pass their matchmaking mantle on to a younger generation, but they still keep their hands in.

When devastation rocks Keeneston and the Rose family, the triplets have to learn how to survive in a male dominated world as single women.  And they work to each of the women's talents.  Violet and Daisy convert their father's pharmacy into the famous Blossom Cafe, and Lily converts the large Victorian they grew up in to the Bed and Breakfast.  Both are iconic locations to the series, and it was amazing to see their roots.

*Ahem* years later, the Roses are all faced with a second chance at love.  Will they take it?  If they do, will becoming married women somehow change their relationship?

Step back in time in Keeneston to find out.

I also want to make a note on the cover choice I made here.  Normally, I choose to show my faithful readers the most current version of the cover of a book, because as we know, covers change and it's easier to find something if you know what you're looking for, I really prefer the original cover of this book.  A Rose, of course, symbolizes all three of the sisters, but their bond and the link between them is what takes them from lovable grannies to the amazing, perfect characters that they are; growing up, they never had to worry about taking a chance--their sisters and their parents would be there to catch them.  I missed that in my life, and I feel that I would be an entirely different person if I'd had someone who believed that I really could do whatever I wanted to.  That is the reason I always return to this book.  It's my bad day book, my rainy day book, my I want to feel like I'm in love book.  And it always will be.

Okay, now that I'm in a sufficiently sappy mood (reading this one, above all of the other Bluegrass books, makes me believe in love, and I'm already a hopeless romantic!), I'm going to turn on some music and do the cleaning that I've been avoiding while reading!  I'll be back in Keeneston again in less than TWO WEEKS, and I couldn't be more excited.  Kathleen Brooks picks the best teasers, and they always make me want to read the books more than I already do!

There's a running hope in the Facebook Blossom Cafe group that Ms. Brooks will turn the Roses into vampires so we never have to lose them.

Leia is With Us

When I heard that Carrie Fisher died in December of 2016, I was shocked.  She was a woman that I looked up to as a badass, mostly because of her role in Star Wars, but also partially because she gets to wield a flamethrower in The Blues Brothers.  If I ever get the chance to play with a flamethrower, I'm going to be so freaking happy.  Back to Star Wars.  Leia Organa is a character that epitomizes, to me, a strong woman decades before a movement.  Rarely, if ever, is she weak; she's constantly trying to figure out what to do next or jumping right into the fray.  She's fearless.  And, for Carrie Fisher, she is an iconic role.  From the white dress and cinnamon bun hair, to the famous bikini, to her more mature outfits as General Organa, Leia is an icon.  You see her, and you see Star Wars.  Fisher herself was a down to earth woman who said what she thought and didn't mince her words.  No wonder I looked up to her!

Fisher was also a writer.  She wrote screenplays and novels, and three memoirs.  I haven't read the first two, Wishful Drinking and Shockaholic, but I have read the last, The Princess Diarist.  This last memoir was published in 2016, just six weeks before Fisher's death, and it centers around one of the most formative events in her life: Filming Star Wars and becoming Leia Organa.  The book was prompted when Fisher found the journals that she kept while filming the movie.

The writing very much feels as if Fisher is telling you a story, and this is increased when you listen to the audiobook--it's narrated by Fisher.  It's a mix of "this is today" and "this is what happened" in the way that stories evolve.  Something may have happened then, such as when Fisher describes her obsession with lip gloss, but you compare it to a later event, such as no one having enough spit to imitate lip gloss except maybe Fisher's dog.  She's also very blunt.  Fisher comes right out and says that her mom offered to watch Fisher have sex and gives her pointers.  It makes the book very real.  Fisher also tells, possibly for the first time, I'd have to do more research, about her affair with the very married, nearly twice her age Harrison Ford.  Ford labeled their pairing "Carrison".  Included are some of the entries from her journal during this time, a mixture of prose and poetry.  It's interesting to see how carefully Fisher is to not mention something, and to see inside of her head.  She was nineteen and had gone into the moving hoping to have an affair.

I laughed, through the whole book, despite the tinge of sadness that Carrie Fisher is gone.  But when reading the acknowledgments, I lost it.  Fisher wrote "For my mother--for being too stubborn and thoughtful to die.  I love yo, but that whole emergency, almost dying thing, wasn't funny.  Don't even THINK about doing it again in any form."  Fisher's mother, Debbie Renoylds, died the day after her daughter.

I have lived in amazing times.  As many memes have posted of Princess Leia, I have lived to see my childhood princess become a general.  I can do anything I want to. 

Leia is with us all.

With a Touch of Mercy

So, this is not the post that I had planned to write for today.  However, I was hit by a very nasty stomach virus that has had be sleeping for the last few days, and probably for a few more.  Pair that with sever dehydration... It has not been fun.  At all.  So I didn't finish the reread of the book that was supposed to be for today's post!  I'm bummed, but I'll be able to bring it out in the future, nice and polished, rather than hastily written.

Today, instead of traveling to Siena, Italy, we're going to head west to the  Tri-Cities of Washington.  The Tri-Cities--Kenniwick, Richland and Pasco--is the setting for Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thomspon books.  (There's also a great spin off series in the same universe that I'll be talking about in early march)  Mercedes Athena Thompson is what she calls a walker.  She's half Native American, with the unique ability of turning into a coyote.  Cool right?  Double coolness comes when you dive into Mercy's world and discover the fae, werewolves and vampires as well. 



The first book in the series is Moon Called.  It introduces us to many of the characters who are going to be so important to the whole series.  First off is Mercy, who in addition to being a walker is a full time Volkswagen mechanic.  She's brave, funny, and sarcastic.  She's strong too.  She can stand up and fight her battles, but she also knows when to let someone be angry and then just talk to them about it later.  Or get back at them later.  Her next door neighbor is Adam Hauptman, the local werewolf Alpha and owner of a security business.  He's got a teenage daughter, Jesse, who is a main character as well.  Jesse is one of those bright confident young women that you really hope your children are going to be.  When Adam is injured and Jesse kidnapped, Mercy does what she thinks is best and takes Adam to the Marrok, the Alpha of Alphas, so he can heal.  Bran Cornick, the Marrok, is a young looking, brilliant man and he also took part in Mercy's upbringing.  Although he wasn't her foster father directly, she really sees him as a father, and he sees her as a daughter, something he says in later books.  The oldest of Bran's sons in Samuel, and he and Mercy have a past.  Samuel is a talented doctor who patches Adam up so he can heal, but he's also a very dominant wolf who can help him keep control.  Samuel, Adam, and Mercy head back to the Tri-Cities to find Jesse and figure out what is going on.  With that mission over, Samuel decides to stick around in the Tri-Cities to pester Mercy for a bit. 

The second book, Blood Bound, gives us more information on the vampires, as Mercy's vampire friend Stefan calls in a debt.  What should be a harmless mission turns into the hunt for a murdering vampiric sorcerer.  This is interesting because while some of the vampires really set me on edge (Wulfe.  He's so creepy, yet I want to know his story), Stefan is a good guy.  He doesn't always believe it, going forward, but he genuinely does what he thinks is right and good.  To eventually deal with the sorcerer, Mercy is lent a few artifacts by her mentor, a metal working fae named Zee, and Uncle Mike, a strong fae who runs a bar I'd kinda like to go to.  She uses them on two monsters, which means that she owes a debt to the fae.

Zee calls that debt in at the beginning of Iron Kissed, when he is searching for a murderer on the fae reservation.  When she ferrets out the killer, Zee and Uncle Mike head out to talk to him, but find him murdered.  Zee is arrested by the police for the murder, but Mercy is having none of that.  She gets herself in to even more trouble by insisting that he is innocent and making the police look for another suspect.  As Nemane, one of the important secondary characters in this book says, part of Coyote's gift is chaos and stirring things up.  Mercy seems particularly good at it.

There are several other books in this series, and each one is individual.  For the most part, I see an overwhelming thread of "what does it mean to be human?" and "If you are not genetically human, can you still have humanity?", with that second question being much more theoretical.  A great example is Stefan.  He's a vampire, but he acts with humanity.  He keeps his menagerie (the people he feeds from) happy and healthy, but he still feeds from them.  It's a necessity for him.  Is it inhumane? 

Even if you're not looking for a deeper meaning, which I will admit, I haven't been as I've been rereading the series while sick this week, they're fun.  The books themselves are average length for adult books, but to me, they read very quickly.   In most cases, the next book picks up right where the one before lets off, or with a believable and explained time jump, which I appreciate.  It annoys me to  no end when a book is over, you pick up the next one, and for no apparent reason, its a year and a half later.  UGH.  Anyway.   I'm going to sign off now, get some more sleep, and I'll see you guys next week!

Giltter and Gold

The book for today's post is different that what I've written about before.  First, it's a memoir, an autobiography.  Second, it tells of a world that few will believe actually existed.  The Glitter and the Gold is the story of a young American girl forced to marry against her will.  With this marriage, she became one of the most powerful, but most unhappy women in the United Kingdom.  Divorce and subsequent annulment would finally allow her to live the happy life of her dreams.  In three sentences, it might seem as if I've told you the whole plot of the book, and in a way, I have, but this memoir is so much more.  It's a glimpse inside a changing world.

When I started work on my master's thesis in late spring 2015, I had no idea what I was going to do.  While my degree was in American Studies, I didn't find anything about American history really interesting.  My adviser, Dr. Jim Walsh, looked at me and said, "Tory, what do you find interesting?"  His point was, of course, that I would never be able to write a decent paper on anything that I didn't have a stake in.  I wouldn't be able to keep myself entertained enough to finish the research, let alone write the thesis.  Now, spring 2015 happened to coincide with the airing of the fifth season of Downton Abbey, a show that I loved and still love.  I told Jim that I thought it was interesting that an American woman would marry into the English aristocracy.  He told me to look into it and tell him what I found.

What I found was greater than I could have imagined at the time.  This idea of American women marrying European aristocracy led to enormous political, social and economic change, although I centered my research on the British Isles.  The Glitter and the Gold is one of the early books that I read about this period.  The world that a young Consuelo Vanderbilt grew up in was so different from the world that she occupied at the time of writing this book.  She lived through five wars, by the time of her death, two husbands, and three flags.  For years she lived without the protection of a country's citizenship, and she was sold into marriage by her mother.  And yet, in her memoir, Madame Balsan--After her divorce from the English duke, Consuelo Vanderbilt married a French Airman--does not really lay blame on anyone.  It's hopeful and informative.  It doesn't ridicule the crazy life lead by the aristocracy, but it gives an inside look.

Mme Balsan wrote The Glitter and the Gold in 1953, when she was 76 years old.  She says that she doesn't remember much of her youth, and that "there are no journals to help me--there are but the meagre notes of engagements made; the press cuttings of recorded events."  Despite this, there are a surprising number of intimate details, things that I don't think I could remember about my own life and I'm only 25!  Her narrative starts with her reminiscing about a painting that was done when she was three, that memory chosen because she's watching her young granddaughter play.  Unlike her granddaughter, at three Consuelo Vanderbilt was posing for a portrait.  This tale, which takes up all of a few paragraphs, illustrates the difference between the world Vanderbilt grew up in and the world that she knows.

One thing that really strikes me about this memoir is something that I mentioned before.  It's written without drama.  Of course, the events don't need any drama added to them, but Mme Balsan writes them as if they were simple events that happened.  It comes across as if she's writing nothing more important than what shirt she chose to wear for the day, or announcing that she's going on vacation.  She talks about visits with her cousin-by-marriage, Winston Churchill, when Churchill was still a boy.  There is no deference to the Lion Among Men that Churchill would become later.  Mme Balsan's story is laid out with beautiful simplicity.

I hope that this post makes at least a few of you read the story of this remarkable woman.  She was a major influence and helped to direct women's rights and status, with long reaching arms that are still visible today.  Beyond that, just the life that is lived by the upper class is fascinating and unbelievable.  The comparison of the aristocracy and the life she didn't choose as "glitter" with her life as the wife of a French airman as "gold" is also heartwarming.  It makes one smile.  True love will always win.

You Shall Be Ordinary

Many moons ago I found a book called The Ordinary Princess.  I was intrigued by the title, to begin with.  A princess who is ordinary?  What does that even mean?  So, elementary school me picked up the book and opened to the first page of the foreward.  I'll admit right here that I was an odd child.  Even in elementary school I read forwards.  I've always been a reader.  I remember in what must have been second grade--I switched schools for third--being the youngest in an advanced reading group.  We read The Secret Garden, a book a still love and will be writing about on here in a few months.  Anyway. I read the forward and M.M.  Kaye, the author, made a great point:  "... apart from such rare exceptions as Snow White, [the princesses] were blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful, with lovely figures and complexions and extravagantly long hair."  And it's not fair!  She says it's with that realization that this story was born.

The Ordinary Princess is the story of the seventh daughter of the King and Queen of Phantasmorania.  The couple, who already had six lovely and perfect princesses (the king and queen of Phantasmorania always have daughters; the new king will be the youngest son of the eldest princess.) and are overjoyed that they are going to be having a seventh.  A seventh daughter is very lucky.  Eventually, Princess Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne is born to much celebration and fanfare.  As the seventh princess, it is decided to invite the fairies to her christening, although her Royal Papa is against all the fuss.  The christening seems to go off without a hitch, until near the end.  The Fairy Crustacea is caught in traffic, of all things, and is late, much to her own annoyance.  She reads the gifts from the other fairies and it seems like the little princess is going to have a magical life.  But Crustacea says to the baby that she will give her a gift that will bring her more happiness than all the others combined.  "You shall be ordinary," she declares and leaves.  With this declaration, the baby starts to scream from sheer annoyance.  She's a normal baby.

And her parents don't love the baby, who comes to be known by the perfectly normal name of Amy, any less than any of her sisters.  Her mother is a bit flustered because she can't seem to get Amy married off because she's not a perfect, golden princess.  She's gawky and her hair is dark and straight.  Her eyes can't settle on a color and she has freckles across her snub nose.  She often climbs out of her tower and goes off to play in the Forest of Faraway.  She's happy. 

Her parents get desperate to marry her off--they're considering the locked-in-a-tower, guarded-by-a-dragon route--that Amy simply decided to leave.  She wanders into the Forest of Faraway, leaving a note for her family so that they won't worry, and meets her godmother, the Fairy Crustacea.  Her dress is starting to fall apart and her shoes and stockings are worthless.  Crustacea tells Amy that she must work for money, and points her to the city of Amber, capital of Ambergeldar, where Amy gets a job as a scullery maid in the palace.  After she is there for several weeks, there is a large feast hosted so that Algernon, king of Ambergeldar, can meet a princess to marry.  Cleaning up, she meets Peregrine, a man of all work, and they become friends.  Of course, Peregrine and Amy are both keeping a large secret from the other.  What happens when the secrets come out?

I have loved this book since I read it.  I think that's because it emphasizes that ordinary is not bad.  Amy's story ends perfectly happy.  You don't have to be gorgeous or perfect for someone to like you.  Many people like you exactly how you are.  According to Schoolastic, it's set for reading levels 3-5 so it comes at a great time in a child's life to remind them that they are perfect just the way they are.  You could also read it with younger children.  It's also not very girly, so you could read it with boys and girls alike.  Despite it's original publication in 1980, this is a timeless classic that should go on every shelf.  It's even peppered with illustrations by the author herself!

A Love Story Wrapped in a Fairy Tale

I've had a surprisingly difficult time writing today's post, and I didn't think that I would.  I love a good love story, and Tolkien excels at them.  However, I just got out of a very bad relationship, and I was a bit bitter.  The story of Beren and Lúthien is a love story of epic proportions.  It is also the story of J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife, Edith.  On their tombstone, Beren is engraved under J.R.R. Tolkien’s name, and Lúthien under Edith Tolkien’s.  Christopher Tolkien, their son, recently published Beren and Lúthien, which he describes as the most complete progression of the tale.

The story itself is beautiful, and it harkens to a familiar tale, if you've watched or read (!) The Lord of the Rings.  Let me refresh your memory of the tale of Arwen Undómiel and Aragorn, son of Arathorn.  Arwen is the Half-Elven daughter of Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, and his Lady, Celebrían.  Being Half-Elven, she had the right to chose mortality or immortality.  She spent her life split between Rivendell and Lothlórien.  On one of her stays with her father in Rivendell, she met the orphaned heir to the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor, Aragorn.  For his own safety, Aragorn was being raised by Elrond with no real knowledge of his past.  Aragorn was twenty, Arwen, 2700.  Aragorn fell instantly in love with Arwen, even believing that he had fallen into a dream and seen Lúthien.  Arwen felt the same.  Years later, they met again and the "plighted their troth," or became betrothed.  Arwen gave up her immortality and any chance to sail to the blessed lands to stay with Aragorn, uniting man and elf for a period of peace and prosperity.  Well, it wasn't quite that simple.  It took years for them to actually marry, and Aragorn went through many trials, most of which we see in the movies, more of which are in the books.  Elrond, upon hearing, declared that Arwen would not marry Aragorn until he was king of Arnor and Gondor both--he had to claim his crowns.  But she never lost faith in him.  After the War of the Ring, the couple married.  Arwen granted her place on the ships to the West to Frodo, the Ringbearer, and lived happily with Aragorn as Queen of the Reunited Kingdom.  They had one son, Eldarion, and a bunch of daughters.  When Aragorn died, she left Minas Tirith, their capital, and wandered before laying down under a tree at Cirith Amroth in Lórien and died of a broken heart.

That's the short version, and the tale that brings Beren and Lúthien full circle.  Now for the book I actually read. 

In the "Beren and Lúthien" story, Lúthien is dancing in the woods while her brother, Dairon, plays.  Beren comes across them and is enchanted by the Elven girl.  He tries to speak to her but she and her brother are frightened and run.  Still, they go out on later occasions and Beren sees them, eventually following them home.  He claims to Lúthien's father that he wishes to marry his daughter, and Thingol demands an impossible task, one that is sure to kill Beren:  Thingol wants a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth (the current incarnation of the Dark Lord we all know as Sauron.)  Beren goes off on his quest, but is captured and, hiding his identity, ends up as the servant of one of Morgoth's allies.  Lúthien learns of this fate and tells her brother that she must help him.  Dairon tells their father.  Thingol thinks that this is an appropriate time to lock his daughter in a tree house far above the forest floor.  Great parenting there.  Lúthien then heads off to save Beren, and is sucessful.  Beren wants to continue on his task alone, but eventually agrees to accept Lúthien's help.  They get attacked and Beren is mortally wounded, but Lúthien heals him.  Then they shift into mythical animals and fly to Morgoth's land.  There, Lúthien sings a song that lulls the Dark Lord to sleep, allowing Beren to cut a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown.  They face a giant werewolf (from that earlier battle that Beren was wounded in earlier), and the werewolf bites Beren's hand off--the hand holding the Silmaril.  Beren and Lúthien escape to go back to  Lúthien's father.  Thingol's heart is softened by the tales of their deeds and allows them to marry.  Then Beren gets together a hunting party for the werewolf.  Beren is fatally wounded, but kills the werewolf.  His last action before dying is to give Thingol the Silmaril.  Lúthien is devastated.  Grieving, she goes to the hall of Mandos, the god of Death and Justice, and sings her tale.  Mandos is moved to pity and brings Beren back to life.  Lúthien is granted a mortal life, and they go off to live and die together.

It sounds eerily similar to the tale of Arwen and Aragorn, no?  That's intentional.  They are meant to be bookend tales to each other.  Lúthien was half-Elven, but her other half was Maia, a form of lower goddess or angel.  Arwen was half-Elven, half-man.  Beren, once settled, was a man who was given an impossible task.  So was Aragorn, although, as a descendant of Beren and Lúthien, he had a longer life than mortal men (it was normal for men of Aragorn's line to live for hundreds of years.), faced with a seemingly impossible task.  Both men are aided in their tasks by Elves.  Beren and Lúthien lived at the beginning of the First Age of Middle Earth, and Aragorn and Arwen at the end of the Third Age, before a golden age of peace and prosperity.  It is the beginning of a story and the end..

The book itself is a progression of the tale, with different versions that show changes.  It starts with "The Tale of Tinúviel", which was Lúthien's original name.  In this version, Beren is another type of Elf called a Gnome.  Lúthien's name is changed, as are her parents'.  Thingol's name was Tinwelint, and Lúthien's mother was Gwendeling rather than Melian the Maia.  The story is essentially the same, but different elements are changed.  Next, we get a few paragraphs from "Sketch of the Mythology", which Christopher Tolkien describes as the piece that shows the continuity between the early "The Tale of Tinúviel" and "Beren and Lúthien."   It's a brief summary of the tale, and then end of it basically says "For the long version, read The Lay of Leithian."  Shockingly, a piece of the Lay of Leithian is what appears next, but this is an early part of the tale, the part where Beren's father was betrayed to Morgoth and killed.  The book continues as such, showing the changes, until you get to the end.  The last part of the book is actually about the children and grandchildren of Beren and Lúthien.  Importantly, what happened to the Silmaril that Beren took.  It went to their grandchildren, eventually, Eärendil and Elwing, the parents of Elrond, Arwen's father, and his brother, Elros, the father of Aragorn's line.  Heartbroken at their inability to protect their sons, they sail for Valinor, in the West.  The Silmaril is on Eärendil's brow, a bright, shining light.  In Valinar, there is called a judgement.  Eventually, it is decided that the half-Elven will have to chose between mortality and immortality.  Eärendil and Elwing chose immortality (Eärendil following Elwing's choice), and Eärendil the Mariner set sail among the stars.  The light of the Silmaril is what Galadriel gives to Frodo as the Light of Eärendil in The Fellowship of the Ring.  With that final piece, the whole story is complete.

I liked this book a lot.  It filled in a lot of the gaps of the mythology, and it was written, Christopher Tolkien's inputs exclueded, in J.R.R. Tolkien's expressive writing.  However, the book started with a fairly lengthy preface and notes section, where Christopher Tolkien talks about the evolution of the story, his parents, and how the names were changed over time to have the "final" version that appears in The Lost Tales section of The Silmillarion.  While informative, and helpful as you get to different revisions of the story, I would have preferred it not to be the whole first 39 pages of the book.  The rest of Tolkien is full of appendices.  The notes section could have easily been an appendix.  This was a bit annoying. 

If you like Tolkien, I highly reccomend adding Beren and Lúthien  to your reading list.  It's a remarkable addition to the volumes already produced by Tolkien.

Hiding in a Small Town

I don't know why, but I like books that take place in small towns.  Maybe it's because I grew up in a small town.  Regardless, I found a new series that I enjoy that just happens to take place in a small town!  I've only read the first book so far, but the Miss Fortune Mystery books are making me laugh like crazy already.  They take place in Sinful, Louisiana and come complete with hilarious old ladies and a main character who couldn't help but make anyone smile.

The first book in this TEN book series is Louisiana Longshot.  CIA operative Fortune Redding was made because there's a leak in her office.  Now one of the biggest arms dealers in the world has a bulls eye out on Fortune.  However, her boss has a niece who just inherited a house in Sinful.  Morrow, Fortune's boss, sends her undercover as his niece Sandy-Sue Morrow, former beauty queen and current knitting librarian.  It is SOOOO not Fortune's gig.  She tries to fit in, but from the very beginning she's on the deputy sheriff's radar.  And that's before the hold hound dog she's inherited digs up a human bone.

Of course, Fortune's new friends Ida Belle and Gertie are right next to her trying to figure out what happened.  See, everyone knows who the bone belongs to: Harvey Chicorn.  Harvey was a mean man who disappeared about five years ago that nobody seems to miss, including his wife Marie.  Marie couldn't be happier the old brute disappeared and then turned up dead, except for the fact that she's the main suspect.  So she disappears.  Ida Belle and Gertie recruit Fortune to help them find Marie and to find who killed Harvey.

Also trying to solve Harvey's death is Deputy Carter LeBlanc, who reads like a hottie!  He's a little straitlaced, sure, but he was a Marine!  It's to be expected.  He also has a rather large rottweiler with... Territory issues.  Carter's world is made more difficult by Fortune and her friends' search into Marie's disappearance and Harvey's death.  He's rather frustrated.  It's cute.

I'm really enjoying this series.  (I'll be honest, I'm on book three now.)  Fortune is chucked into a world that she knows nothing about, but finally makes some friends and is learning to adjust.  Maybe they aren't the best friends when you're laying low, but Gertie and Ida Belle are hillarious with some secrets of their own.  There's also Ally, who is about Fortune's age, and sounds like an amazing baker!  I also like that the romance isn't on your face.  There's something between Carter and Fortune, but it's not something that's resolved in one book.  Or even two.  Maybe three, I'm not done yet, but I doubt it.  This is a funny series that keeps on giving, and manages to make the Who Done It someone you wouldn't suspect.

Go off and read, my friends!

An Escape to Regency England

One of my favorite authors, particularly when I'm looking for a witty book, is Jane Austen.  Oh, I can see you all rolling your eyes now.  I get it.  Some of you are thinking "Why would you read that, it's old and hard to understand."  Some of you are thinking "Not another one!"

Don't worry, this isn't a post about Austen, per se.

See, I love Austen's characters, particularly her main characters.  They are witty and funny and have a flaw, but they also have a journey to overcome and a truth to learn.  I love it when people take Austen's foundation to build their stories.

That's what Katherine Reay does in her books.  Her characters are modern day versions of Austen's.  The first book I read by Ms. Reay was Dear Mr. Knightly, and in that, the main character needed to learn how to deal with the difficult matters in her life head on rather than hiding in her books.  That's just an example, because this is not a post about Dear Mr. Knightly.  This is a post about The Austen Escape.


Ms. Reay's latest book was only published in early November, and I wish I had found it then!  I'm reading it (and writing this post) just over a month after it's publication.  I'm really enjoying the book, but I have to admit, this is the first of Ms. Reay's books where I haven't really liked the cover.  I can't really say why completely.  It might be the colors.

In the book, Mary Davies is an engineer who is having some trouble at work.  Her new boss doesn't really like Mary's style and shelves a project that she's been working on: virtual reality glasses that Mary has named Golightly.  Mary's concerned that the new boss is trying to fire her, or possibly to get her to quit.  It works out nicely to give both women a break when Mary's invited on a two week trip by her friend Isabel.

Isabel comes across as your typical poor little rich girl with Daddy issues.  I don't like her character much at all.  She's fast moving and condescending, and seems to have hijacked some of Mary's familial connections.  But Isabel invites Mary on a two week stay at Braithwait Manor to escape into a costumed escape into the world of Jane Austen.  Isabel decides to be Emma Woodhouse, although to Mary, and to me, she seems more of an Isabella Thorpe (I've copied some character descriptions from the book so you know who I'm talking about.  See the bottom of this post.).  Isabel tries to cast Mary as a sidekick, but Mary decides to be Catherine Morland.  The choices of character are telling.  Mary, it seems, sees herself clearly.  She knows that she is in a small world and she doesn't see or understand the big picture most of the time.  Isabel wanting so desperately to be Emma, someone that everyone admires and who is happy in the end, is a statement of how alone and isolated that she feels.

When Isabel and Mary get to the Manor, all seems well.  Then things get all topsy turvy.  Isabel gets unexpected news from her father, and overnight goes into a type of dissociative state.  She believes that she really is Emma Woodhouse.  Mary is understandably concerned, but she has seen this from Isabel before.  When they were younger, the same thing had happened, but that time, Mary had the support of her parents.  This time, Mary is on her own.

Mary is struggling to deal with Isabel, who seems to not care for her feelings in either state. To complicate matters, it seems that Isabel has knowingly kept a man that Mary is interested dangling, without telling Mary.  The whole situation is uncovered when TCG calls Isabel and Mary answers.   How is Mary supposed to get answers when Isabel doesn't know who she is?

A lot of this book is focused on how we see things.  Are things what they really appear to be?  In most cases, the answer is no.  What we see is not necessarily what's real.  But that doesn't make what we see any less valuable.  However, it takes someone else's eyes sometimes to see the truth.  I like that this book manages to get that point across without shoving it in your face.  Also, I really liked to see the juxtaposition of hard against soft.  Engineering against Regency England.  The two don't really mesh well.  But I like the idea of using Mary's project of the Golightly virtual reality glasses against Braithwaite Manor's costumed reality.  With Golightly, you can place yourself in the world, but it won't interact with you.  At Braithwaite, you immerse yourself in the world and it reacts to you.

This also brings up the idea that you can't do anything alone.  Mary can't complete Golightly without the help of her team.  Mary can't help Isabel without the help of others.  Isabel can't get over the damage her father has done without help.  Gertrude, the woman who runs Braithwaite and is a member of the family that once owned the manor, isn't able to see an important life choice without Isabel's help.  We aren't alone in this world.  So be aware of the help that people want to give you.

Go forth and read!  I hope your new year is going amazing!

Northanger Abbey

Catherine Morland--Catherine is very intelligent and kind.  She is also naieve, as she has little exposure outside of her narrow world, but she learns to think, question, and take ownership for her story throughout this novel.

Isabella Thorpe--Calling Isabella a manipulative gold digger wouldn't be off the mark.  It would, however, not tell the whole story.  Isabella is a beautiful young woman who relishes adoration and flattery.  She also has no clue what she wants in life--besides wealth, of course.

Emma

Emma Woodhouse--Handsome, clever, and rich.  Three things everyone must know about Emma Woodhouse.  One also needs to know she messes up a lot and gets almost everything wrong.  In the end, she sees life more clearly and values friends better, and is rewarded with "perfect happiness" in her marriage.