Tag Archives: Fiction

09/30/2013 · 8:56 pm

Celebrity Literature, Part 2 – Wildwood by Colin Meloy

10431447This time I didn’t even realize it. I read another celebrity written novel, this one chosen solely on the merits of its very interesting cover art. (My first blog post about celebrity authors was The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer.) This time, the celebrity author is Colin Meloy of the folk-rock group The Decemberists, and the illustrator is his wife Carson Ellis, the “illustrator in residence” for the band. Looking at Carson Ellis’ website, I realized she had illustrated The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart, which I loved – the drawings and the story. The novel is titled Wildwood, and it is the start of a fantasy series aimed at middle grade kids.

Ok, now I need to back track a bit. I didn’t sit down and read this story, I actually listened to the audiobook, which was read by the amazing Amanda Plummer. I wish I had read it – I would have seen more of Ellis’ charmingly rustic drawings.

Wildwood is a fantasy tale, drawing on many fantasy archetypes and plot devices. There is a stolen child. There is a character with a secret about their birth. There is a quest, and an animal friend (or two or three). There is magic, plus an evil witch. When I first started listening to the novel, my first inclination was to classify this story as Labyrinth (the movie) meets The Chronicles of Narnia.

And that’s pretty accurate, but add an overlay of Portland west coast hipster. There’s no Turkish delight á la The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Instead, the main characters of Prue and Curtis munch on gorp while hiking through Wildwood. Prue eats squash dumplings while an animal companion tries lentils and greens. Prue rides a fixed gear bike and looks at vinyl records. These details were amusing, creating the hipster vibe.

The plot is fairly simple: Prue’s baby brother is stolen, and she goes after him into the woods – the I.W. – the Impassable Wilderness. Prue is followed by a classmate, Curtis. While in the woods, they are discovered and chased by a group of militarily dressed coyotes who capture Curtis. Prue manages to escape, and travels to Southwood to appeal to the government for help to rescue her brother and Curtis. Bureaucracy and then downright fascism lead to Prue escaping Southwood to go on a quest to consult the Mystics of Northwood. Meanwhile, Curtis enlists in the coyote army, which turns out to be the force of Alexandra, the evil Dowager Governess of Wildwood. Curtis quickly realizes he’s signed onto the wrong team. Prue and Curtis finally meet up again as they help the citizens of Wildwood, both animals and human Bandits, form the Wildwood Irregulars in order to defeat the Dowager Governess.

A few plot details sat uneasily with me. Prue’s parents are strangely absent, delegating much of the baby brother’s childcare to Prue, and then later in the story, they are strangely acquiescent to Prue’s decision to return to the wood. I also was uncomfortable with Curtis’ decision at the end of the story (I am trying not to give away spoilers here). I also found myself wondering how coyotes held their Napoleonic rifles without opposable thumbs. I think this means I wasn’t engaged enough to suspend my disbelief involuntarily.

Aside from these minor distractions, Wildwood is an entertaining story with much to recommend it – interesting magic and lore, a charming blend of mundanity and fantasy, and very likable main characters. The west coast quirks add to the enjoyment, and I will be looking forward to the next installment – this time in print, so I can enjoy Ellis’ illustrations.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Book Review, Book Series, Children's Literature, Fiction

Tagged as , , , , ,

09/08/2013 · 1:02 pm

When Books Collide: People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks and Manuscript Found in Accra by Paulo Coelho

1379961

Have you ever read a book and have it make a kind of crazy convergence with another book you just read? This just happened to me, and I’m finding the contrasts and the comparisons between the two books have made the reading experience richer, and more thought provoking.

Last week, I read/listened to Manuscript Found in Accra by the Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho. I’ll be honest, my hopes were not high for this book. I had read The Alchemist a few years ago and it did not appeal to me at all. Modern allegorical tales like The Alchemist and Jonathan Livingston Seagull leave me cold and unmoved. But I have so many friends whose insight I value that have enjoyed Coelho’s writing , so I was willing to give him another try.

Sadly, Manuscript Found in Accra was not my kind of book. It was a sermonizing bore. The central figure of the book, the Copt, lectures and takes questions from his audience of citizens of Jerusalem, as they await the invasion of a crusader army. The audience is a group of Muslims, Jews, Christians, men and women, who ask vague questions about loneliness, beauty, and love, and the Copt answers in long, tedious philosophizing detail. Not my taste.

Geraldine Brooks’ novel People of the Book  I read closely on the heels of Accra. People of the Book tells the fictional history of a real manuscript – the Sarajevo Haggadah – through the lives of the people that come in contact with the book. Brooks tells the history of the book both backwards and forwards, through the conservator that repairs the book in war torn Sarajevo, and the men and women who created the 16071938book, and protected the book through the countless pogroms and exoduses of modern Europe.

Here’s where the books collide.  Manuscript Found in Accra waxes poetic about medieval Jerusalem, how it was a welcoming place where Jews, Christians, and Muslims were neighbors and lived together peaceably. The audience listening to the Copt is this mixed group of people, listening to the wise man together. I don’t know how accurate this picture of Jerusalem is, but I can tell you that it didn’t feel real when reading it.

People of the Book shows the reader religious conflict in abundance. Muslims, Christians, Jews are constantly on tenterhooks when dealing with each other, dancing around propriety and predjuce in a constantly shifting balance of power. But the book, this precious, beautifully illustrated book, gives the characters a common ground in their desire to preserve and protect it. Jews, Muslims, and Christians all conspire to save the book.

That felt true. People of different faiths – or no faith at all – coming together to preserve an object of beauty.

I think if I hadn’t read Accra just before People of the Book, I would not have appreciated the idealistic viewpoints of either book. Both books present the idealistic view that people of different faiths can live together and prosper through that life. However, People of the Book demonstrates this through the collective acts of compassion that the characters show to each other in order to save the book. Manuscript Found in Accra simply shows the nameless, multi-faithed audience, listening raptly to the Copt.

For me, the cliché – actions speak louder than words – held true.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Book Review, Fiction

Tagged as , , ,

08/29/2013 · 1:00 pm

A Dickens of a Pilgrimage

Earlier this month, my family traveled to the United Kingdom to have a mini vacation in London, and then visit family further south in Hampshire. One of my husband’s favorite touring spots is the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, home to Nelson’s Victory, The Royal Navy Museum, the ironclad ship the Warrior, and the newly designed museum housing the Mary Rose, the Tudor warship that sank in Portsmouth harbor in 1545. The dockyards are a terrific day out, and I highly recommend visiting if you are ever in Portsmouth. I, however, must confess to being a bit tired of visiting the same sites, and this year I asked to be dropped off in Portsmouth and I would walk down to the harbor later.

One Mile End Terrace

See how unassuming? Dickens’ birthplace is the house with the circular plaque.

You see, Portsmouth is home to a couple of literary pilgrimages that I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time.  This year, I visited 1 Mile End Terrace, home of the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum.  One Mile End is a small, unassuming Georgian terrace home, on a residential street. So unassuming that according to a museum display, that Dickens himself could not identify the house when he visited Portsmouth as an adult. His strongest memory of Portsmouth seems to be of leaving Portsmouth as a child, with the city covered in snow.

The furnishings at Dickens’ birthplace are mostly period furnishings, but not authentic to the time when the Dickens family were renting the house. I really enjoyed the illustration display in one of the bedrooms, showing different artist interpretations of Dickens’ characters. There was also quite a bit of ephemera – a lock of Dickens’ hair, period photographs, playbills, and small personal items. Dickens was so famous during his life, that people saved all sorts of items he owned or touched. There were quite a few checks written by Dickens on display. Apparently, people preferred to keep a check written by the famous Boz rather than cash it!

IMG_1874

Charles Dickens died on this couch.

The most important item in museum’s collection is the couch from Dickens’ home Gad’s Hill, upon which he is supposed to have died. It’s possible that he may have died elsewhere – possibly at his mistress Ellen Ternan’s home, and then moved to the couch at Gad’s Hill where his death was reported.

However, my favorite piece in the museum was a pair of bookcases that Dickens owned. IMG_1861It was donated to the museum by a family member, and contained souvenir porcelain, mainly toby jugs, featuring Dickens’ characters. I just loved the bookcases, and I wish I knew what Dickens kept on the shelves.

If you are a fan of Charles Dickens, and happen to be in Portsmouth, I would recommend stopping by. It’s a tiny place, and will only take an hour of time to enjoy, even if you linger. It’s probably not enough of a “pilgrimage” to warrant a special trip on its own.

However, if you are also a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle, Portsmouth may be worth a stop for you. Doyle spent the early years of his writing career practicing medicine in Southsea. Portsmouth was bequeathed an extraordinary collection of Doyle writings, which is house in a research library called the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection Lancelyn Green Bequest. While the archive is open by appointment only, there’s a permanent exhibition called A Study in Sherlock at the Portsmouth City Museum. Guess where I’m headed the next time the family goes to the dockyard?

Leave a comment

Filed under Fiction, Literary Pilgrimage

Tagged as , , , , , ,

07/27/2013 · 11:30 am

Summer, Books, and Baseball

Summer means extra time to read books, and to watch baseball. Sometimes the two come together in a magical confluence, combining the pleasures of the mind with the pleasure of sport. My baseball reading list isn’t long, regrettably, but these are the baseball themed books I love:

2967641. “The Thrill of the Grass” by W.P. Kinsella

“The Thrill of the Grass” by W.P. Kinsella has to be one of the most perfect short stories ever written. Combining insights about family, change, and baseball, the only problem with this gem is that it’s a short story and ends all too quickly. Kinsella is famous for his baseball themed literature, most of all for his 1981 novel Shoeless Joe, which will live forever as the basis for the classic movie Field of Dreams. I first heard “The Thrill of the Grass” on Selected Shorts, a NPR radio show that features actors reading short stories. Humorous moments, such as the narrator’s feelings of betrayal as his daughter chooses to watch the game from the “other”, third base, side with her boyfriend, rather than his customary first base side, are abundant. The ending leaves the reader smiling, and perhaps a bit teary.

167052. Summerland by Michael Chabon

Quite possibly the best quote I’ve ever read about baseball is from this book:

The fundamental truth: a baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.

Michael Chabon, Summerland.

Summerland is a difficult book to describe. Eleven year old Ethan has been selected by the ferishers (fairy-like small people based on Native American mythology) to be their champion on their baseball team. The villain, Coyote, is trying to bring about Armageddon, and he’s kidnapped Ethan’s father, who is the inventor of the personal zeppelin. All this sounds odd and convoluted, but trust me, it’s enjoyable novel and many games of baseball are played.

109963423. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

What happens when you get what you wish for? Will you choke and be unable to handle it? Will you embrace your dream fully? And what if it wasn’t your dream, but someone else’s dream for you?

Henry Skrimshander is a college shortstop phenomenon, about to break the college record for innings without errors, when he lets loose a wild throw that sends his roommate and fellow teammate into the hospital. How Henry handles his vulnerability is at the heart of this novel, but the other characters face equally terrifying self revelations. The character of Mike Schwartz, Henry’s mentor and baseball team captain, is a compelling portrait of a college athlete with worn out knees, and a possible painkiller addiction.

Henry’s personal bible is a book called The Art of Fielding, written by a major league shortstop. I found this metafictional aspect of The Art of Fielding especially fascinating, since Summerland also uses this device. Summerland‘s fictional reference is called How to Catch Lightning and Smoke, a reference book for would-be catchers by E. Peavine, and is the “source” for my favorite quote above.

The zen-like wisdom from the fictional The Art of Fielding is both a guide and frustration to Henry. Mulling over some of the wisdom of the fictional The Art of Fielding, I stumbled upon this very well written blog piece: The buddhist-baseball-wisdom-of-aparicio-rodriguez. The author and I have a different approaches to The Art of Fielding – he comes to the novel through an enjoyment of sports themed literature, while I enjoy the literature and am surprised by the sports themes.

But I believe that this is the most basic truth about baseball novels: they are never really just about baseball.

As always, if you can recommend any other baseball themed books you have enjoyed, please let me know the title in the comments section. Thanks!

Leave a comment

Filed under Book Review, Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

07/05/2013 · 8:14 pm

The Romance of King Arthur

Image

This is the copy I read as a kid. The publication date on this is 1977 – so, buying it secondhand, I was probably 12 or 13.

Ah, Arthur. Who was he? Did he really exist? Was he a resistance fighter, or a true king? Or were the tales really stories of a “Cave” Arthur, a legendary leader that predates history? I don’t care, actually. I just love the tales and all their glorious retellings. My first introduction to Arthurian legend was through the novel The Once and Future King by T.H. White, like so many other readers. I read this wonderful account of King Arthur when I was a young teen, reading an ancient paperback that threatened to lose its cover before I finished it.

129521

If you enjoy Arthurian legend, you must read the source material in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s chronicle.

At university, I explored Arthurian tales in my classes, reading Chretien de Troyes’ romances, and the histories of the Venerable Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth. After graduating, my mind was blown by the brilliant reimagining of Arthur through Morgan le Fay’s POV as told by Marian Zimmer Bradley in The Mists of Avalon. That novel gets a place of honor on my permanent bookshelf in the sky.

3104570Then Bernard Cornwell’s novels (The Warlord Chronicles) appeared on the scene, and I was once again amazed at the way another author could take these legends, put them in a blender, and come out with a completely different atmosphere, making different thematic choices and focusing on different pieces of the legend. I thought it couldn’t get any more interesting than Bradley’s amazingly powerful Arthurian women, but Cornwell’s dirty, gritty stories just as powerful, and you can smell the manure – and the magic.

205059_SCH-SeeStone.JKT_0.tif

I just enjoyed reading The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland, an Arthurian interpretation for a young adult audience. Crossley-Holland sets his tale in 1199, on a lord’s estate close to the English-Welsh border. The narrator of the tale, Arthur, is the second son of Sir John. He’s thirteen, not very good at tilting or swordsmanship, but has a gift with words. Merlin, a mysterious man who resides on the estate, gives Arthur a stone of obsidian, and cautions him to never mention it to anyone. Arthur discovers that this stone gives him visions, where he sees another thirteen year old boy named Arthur, whose story strangely echoes his.

The story was very well told. Crossley-Holland takes the Arthur of legend up to the momentous sword in the stone moment, leaving room for a few more novels which I think I may have to read. My only complaint about the novel is that Crossley-Holland’s chapters are so short – at the most 3 pages – that the narrative feels choppy and jumpy. I wish he had taken the time to extend some of the chapters, exploring the emotions in a deeper fashion.

I think the book I need to add to my book bank is Thomas  Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, but I’d love some additional suggestions. Are you a reader of Arthurian fiction? What would be on your Arthurian reading list?

Leave a comment

Filed under Book Review, Book Series, Children's Literature, Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

06/28/2013 · 12:41 pm

11/22/63 by Stephen King

10644930

I find it interesting that many readers who don’t regularly read science fiction, do read Stephen King’s novels that are categorized as scifi. King’s novels The Running Man (originally published under the name Richard Bachman), Cell, The Stand, and Insomnia are what I would call “soft” science fiction, that is, scifi without a heavy reliance on scientific description or concepts. The novel 11/22/63 is a perfect example – a novel that went to the top of the bestseller lists, and stayed there for 17 weeks, yet it is a novel that starts with the revelation of a time travel portal.

But, of course, it’s more than just a story about a time traveller trying to change history. It’s about doing a bad deed in order to accomplish a greater good. It’s about the “butterfly effect” that time travel stories often discuss. It’s a heartwrenching love story. It’s a story of inspiring others to do great things.

The plot is long reaching, and takes time to develop, but it doesn’t meander. The main character, Jake Eppler, is given a task by his friend Al Templeton, who has discovered a time portal to 1958 in the storage room of his diner. Al convinces Jake to travel to 1958, and stay there until 1963 to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which Al has determined to be the precise moment that the US started down a bad path. Jake agrees, after he travels to 1958 and is able to prevent the murder of a local family. Al has kept copious notes about his time traveling adventures, where he gathered details on the daily activities of Lee Harvey Oswald and his associates. Jake travels back in time, and makes his way to Texas, where he finds work as a high school English teacher.

Jake blossoms and discovers a zest for life in Texas of the early sixties that his life in 2011 had never given him. He finds love with Sadie – the librarian at the high school, and satisfaction in his work, and companionship in the small town where he settles. But Dallas, 1963 is always hanging over his head, and his preparations for that day in Dealey Plaza begin to dominate his life, upsetting his love life and happiness.

I thoroghly enjoyed this novel. King has a gift for creating characters that you could swear you had already met. They are believable, and react in realistic ways, even when placed in a strange, time travel fantasy. As always, King’s writing communicates  a rich world, this time the US in the late fifties and early sixties, where, to Jake the world is “full.”

This fifty years-gone world smelled worse than I ever would have expected, but it tasted a whole hell of a lot better. Stephen King, 11/22/63, p.38

King gives the reader a few key phrases to hang onto in this novel. First,

The past is obdurate.

And the other:

Dancing is life.

King ends the novel on a perfect, sweet-sad note that moved me to tears. Highly recommended.

Leave a comment

Filed under Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction

Tagged as , ,

06/20/2013 · 10:20 am

The Dinner by Herman Koch

15797938

The Dinner by Herman Koch was the June selection for the AMBC (Awesome Members Book Club) and it was an amazing choice that sparked a terrific conversation. This novel was originally published in 2009 in the Netherlands, and the translation was released in February in the United States. Many reviews compare this novel to Gone Girl, and while it does have some similarities to the thriller by Gillian Flynn, Koch’s novel is much more subversive and satirical.

The Dinner is the story of a dinner, two couples at a fancy restaurant meeting to talk about their teenaged sons. The husbands of the couples are brothers with a long history of mistrust and resentment, and their sons have committed an atrocity that needs addressing.

Koch plots the book through the courses of the meal, from aperitif to appetizer, all the way through to after dinner espresso. The narrator, Paul, tells the story, piece by piece, revealing the disturbing and horrific details through flashbacks. Paul’s opening affability and talk of “happy families” deepens into something darker. The seeming ignorance of the wives is skewered. Serge’s popularity tries Paul’s impatience. Each flashback exposes another layer, and the reader understands that Paul is not the most reliable of narrators.

The contrast between the painstaking descriptions of artistically prepared, artisan sourced food with the brutality and morally reprehensible actions of the characters takes the novel to a level of satire that I have not experienced in a very long time. Paul takes a perverse delight in asking the restaurant manager the provenance of the grapes garnishing his plate. The manager describes the grapes to a level of ridiculous detail but is unaware of Paul’s scorn.  Similarly, Paul describes his own episodes of violence to the reader, evoking a response of horror and disgust from the reader that Paul would not understand.

As I read the novel, my opinions of the characters evolved to such a degree that by the end, the “bad” characters were the only ones with any redeeming qualities.

Koch satirizes many of the aspects of post modern life – the ridiculous obsession with food, the culture of celebrity, reality tv and YouTube sensations. And underneath it all lie the age old questions of nature vs. nurture and how far parents will go to protect their children. Moral bankruptcy is the final item on the bill at the end of The Dinner.

This is a fast read that will draw the reader in quickly, almost too quickly – but I think that’s Koch’s intent. He draws you into a satirical black comedy, and then suddenly the reader realizes they are in the middle of a psychological thriller. This is a fantastic read, and I highly recommend it. If you enjoy a good story, it’s here. If you want deeper questions about morality and responsibility, they’re here too. Have fun!

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under AMBC books, Book Review, Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

06/03/2013 · 6:38 pm

The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer

11607446

Celebrity memoirs can be a guilty pleasure. A bit more highbrow than a supermarket tabloid, but possibly just as titillating, celebrity memoirs consistently make the bestseller lists. But what about celebrities that aspire to be authors of fiction, rather than having a ghost writer help them hash out their life story? The only celebrity fiction authors that quickly spring to my mind are Carrie Fisher and Jamie Lee Curtis. And let’s face it, Postcards from the Edge (Fisher) was reportedly based on Fisher’s own experiences. And Curtis’ very respectable entries in the world of fiction are picture books written for the elementary set.

So my experience with the celebrity-as-writer-of-fiction is limited, which is why I was very intrigued to see The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer on the new books shelf at my local library.  Colfer is the very talented actor who has risen to fame firstly on the strength of his performance as Kurt Hummel on the television show Glee, and then through his activism, particularly through his very personal message to teens shared on The Trevor Project. I find him very inspiring, and extraordinarily charming on screen.

Colfer credits his grandmother for inspiring his deep love for story, and dedicates The Wishing Spell to her. He’s definitely a fan of traditional fairy tales – so many traditional tales like Cinderella, Snow White, Goldilocks, and Jack and the Beanstalk feature prominently in his tale. Colfer uses the familiar tales as a background for the main story of Alex and Connor, girl and boy twins that accidentaly travel to the Land of Story not long after their father dies.

Alex and Conner want to get back to reality, and find a journal describing the Wishing Spell. They decide that using the spell is the only way they’ll be able to get back home, so they undertake the arduous task of assembling its ingredients, which include Cinderella’s glass slipper, and a piece of the basket Red Riding Hood carried to her grandmother. Finding these elements requires them to travel all over the Land of Story, a journey made even more difficult by the pack of wolves that are pursuing them, plus the servants of the Evil Queen who are also chasing down the ingredients to the Wishing Spell.

The fairy tales are all pretty familiar, with some amusing fractures, such as Goldilocks’ portrayal as a persecuted vigilante. The main plot device of assembling the ingredients for the Wishing Spell is very similar to the plot of Into the Woods, the Broadway musical written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. The main characters, Alex and Connor, step into fairly stereotypical roles. Alex is bookish and brainy, with no close friends, and Connor is brawny and popular, and hates school.

The Wishing Spell plays it safe, not overly stretching the reader with anything difficult. Where the story does gets interesting is in the original fairy tales Colfer includes and refers to in the novel, intriguingly titled the tale of the Walking Fish, and the tale of the Curvy Tree. Unfortunately, these tales are not explored as deeply as the familiar tales. Hopefully, Colfer will return to these original tales in the sequels he has planned.

Colfer’s prologue to the story is also nicely done, challenging the young audience to rethink their ideas of a villain. Snow White visits her stepmother in prison (no death by hot shoes in this version) to try and get some answers on the Queen’s motivation for targeting Snow White. The Queen offers this:

But what the world fails to realize is that a villain is just a victim whose story hasn’t been told.   The Evil Queen, The Wishing Spell, p9

Colfer is not an especially gifted writer of dialogue. In fact, much of the dialogue reads like a Disney sitcom and made me grimace. You can just about see the double-takes and camera mugging. But, I am not the intended audience. I know that this type of dialogue, with silly retorts and putdowns, is considered very funny by the third grader in my house.

I would recommend this novel to a child who enjoys familiar fairy tales, particularly the prince and princess-y stories. Late elementary grades are probably the best audience – I would say third grade to sixth grade would probably be the most entertained. There are some incidental illustrations by Brandon Dorman that add to the mood of the novel. The illustrated map is particularly well done.

Colfer’s first outing as a novelist hasn’t broken any new ground, but it is entertaining. Hopefully the next installments in the Land of Story series will improve upon the first, and I’m hoping that Colfer’s original fairy tales take a greater role.

5 Comments

Filed under Book Review, Book Series, Children's Literature, Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , ,

05/19/2013 · 10:15 pm

A New Literary Pilgrimage – Québec City

Bury Your Dead book coverAs a Biblio-filia, I have the geeky habit of making literary pilgrimages. Some of these trips turn out better than others, I admit. My fall trip to Tarrytown, New York with another booky friend to visit the haunts of Washington Irving, author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? Super! Dragging my husband to Haworth, Yorkshire to see the home of the Brontes? Well, let’s just say we had a good long walk on the moor.

There’s a new literary pilgrimage that I am putting on my to-do list this year. Tours Voir Quebec (http://www.toursvoirquebec.com/en/old-quebec-tours/bury-your-dead) in Québec City has put together a walking tour that features the settings in the novel Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. Penny writes the critically acclaimed Inspector Gamache series, a mystery series that starts with the novel Still Life, published in 2007. The series has a total of eight books, and the ninth will be published this summer.

Most of Penny’s mysteries have been set in the fictional village of Three Pines, an Anglophone village in the Canadian province of Québec. Other books have been located in other fictional locations – a remote monastery in her most recent novel, The Beautiful Mystery, and a spectacular, old fashioned resort hotel in A Rule Against Murder. The novel Bury Your Dead is the only novel, to date, that is set in a real place.

270px-Château_Frontenac_02

Chateau Frontenac

And the real place is Québec City, which Penny describes in attractive, comforting detail. Inspector Gamache is recuperating from an injury at the home of an old friend and colleague in Québec City. As part of his recuperation, Gamache indulges his passion for historical research in the Québec Literary and Historical Society, a fantastic library established to preserve the history of the English people of Québec. Gamache and his friend sip cafe au lait at cafes, Gamache takes walks with his dog in the narrow streets of Québec City, and through the entire novel we see the facade of the Chateau Frontenac, Québec City’s landmark hotel.

I have started pricing train tickets, and hotels in Quebec City… hopefully I will make it there soon.

If you are a fan of the mystery genre, I highly recommend Penny’s novels. Her characters are memorably written and her descriptions of settings are exceptionally vivid and emotionally evocative. The main detective character, Armand Gamache, is a gentle, honorable man with a fascinating backstory. Penny’s website is also one of the best author websites I have ever explored. You can find out the series order, learn how to pronounce the French in the books, and get publishing information. Visit Louise Penny’s website at: http://www.louisepenny.com.

1 Comment

Filed under Book Series, Library Feature, Literary Pilgrimage

Tagged as , , , ,

04/22/2013 · 2:55 pm

World Book Night 2013

Hi res WBN logo 2013There are few things more satisfying than sharing a good book with someone. I would rank “sharing a book” above “my mother-in-law’s chocolate bread pudding,” and trust me, that is saying something. One of my favorite book sharing memories comes from when I was just out of college, trying to figure out how transition from college friend to adult friend. My friend Judy and I had a very grown up, meet your friend for lunch get together, but we needed something more. At that time there was a wonderful independent book seller on Main Street in Newark, Delaware, and Judy and I stopped in to browse together after lunch. We each decided to buy a book – for the other person. I cannot remember what book I bought Judy. I hope it was a good title. Judy bought me The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, which rocked my world and changed me, and has been on my list of favorite books ever since.

I also love sharing books with my kids. When they were small, I read to them favorites from my childhood, like The House with a Clock in its Walls by John Bellairs, Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  It’s thrilling when they love the books I have chosen, and even if they don’t love my choice, I learn something about them and their personalities. When I get a book recommendation from my kids, I always give it a try – I know if they want me to read a book, they are sharing a private world and inviting me in to take a look. That’s important.

My strongest book sharing relationship is with my friend Julie. For the past 10 years, we have passed books back and forth, and we have developed a code for our book sharing. If Julie tells me she doesn’t want the book back, I know it’s a good book, but not a great book. If I tell Julie that she needs to give the book back when she’s done so my husband can read it too, she knows it’s a fast paced, exciting book. And if we hand a book over to share and it’s a library book with a week left on its checkout, it must be an amazing book that is too good to wait for the library bureaucracy to process. Read it NOW.

5302888I was in England in the spring of 2011 when I first heard about World Book Night, reading a poster in a W.H. Smith’s. Amazing! A night devoted to sharing books, especially with people who might not be enthusiastic readers. And then in 2012, World Book Night was introduced to the United States. Last year, I was a book giver for World Book Night, and the title I gave out was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I picked The Hunger Games as my first choice, because I felt it was a title that crossed genres  – young adult, fantasy, girl heroine, science fiction – and could appeal to many readers, particularly people who don’t choose to read very often. The editions given away on World Book Night were printed for the occasion, and were donated by the publishers and authors.

I applied again this year to give away books, and this year I will be giving away Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. I have not read this book yet, and it feels strange to give away a book that I don’t have a personal connection to yet. Mudbound won the Bellwether Prize, awarded to unpublished manuscripts that support social responsibility, which is the reason this book was my first choice to give away. This year, as I did last year, I will be giving my books to the residents and staff of Epiphany House in Wilmington, Delaware, part of the ministries of Friendship House. Friendship House does amazing work for the homeless in my hometown. I hope that having a good book to read will make a difference to the women of Epiphany House.

Sometimes having a good book to read can make all the difference in the world.

Leave a comment

Filed under Book Event, Children's Literature, Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , ,