Medieval Bookworm

It’s 1914.  Tensions are about to erupt in Europe.  John Somerville, however, has problems of his own to worry about.  He’s excavating what he believes to be a forgotten Assyrian palace in Mesopotamia, part of the gigantic Ottoman Empire.  Unluckily for him, the Germans are coming with a railroad that will go right through Tell Erdek, his precious site, the excavation of which he has self-financed for three years in a desperate bid to make a name for himself.  Along with him is his younger colleague, Palmer, who has a passion for ancient writing; his wife Christine, who thrives on Somerville’s enthusiasm and purity of passion; Patricia, a grad student who is at the forefront of the feminist movement and very outspoken; and Jehar, an Arab man who feeds Somerville information in exchange for the gold to win him the love of his life.  Into this mess arrives Elliott, an American geologist masquerading as an archaeologist to gain information about oil.  Every character’s loyalties are tested as tensions escalate not only between European powers but at the excavation site itself.

I’d heard, before starting this book, that others really struggled with it, abandoning it and giving it away.  I thought it was going to be terrible.  Once again, I put it off.  When I finally did read it, I could see in some cases what those who disliked this book thought about it.  For one thing, it’s quite political.  A lot of time is spent discussing the importance of the oil and the conflicts between the countries who are racing to get it.  Nor are all the characters likeable.  Christine spends time feeling disdainful towards Patricia because she is too outspoken.  The mere idea that women could vote shocks Christine, who desires nothing more than to spend her life supporting a powerful and influential man.  Can you tell that Christine made me gag a little?  Okay, a lot.

On the bright side, though, despite its faults I found myself loving the book.  I have to say being an aspiring historian and secret fan of the exciting part of archaeology really helped me in that.  If I didn’t feel as excited about Somerville’s discovery as he did, the book would have totally fallen flat for me.  There is something fascinating about pulling history out of the ground and this is just what Somerville is doing and what he’s passionate about.  How could I not love a guy like him?  This is even if he is a bit uncertain about himself, especially given that it’s hard to blame him.  As soon as he realized that there was something amazing down there, I was hooked.

I also found this book incredibly politically relevant.  I’m often irritated that so many of the problems in the Middle East have to do with European powers stepping in and carving up arbitrary countries for their own benefit.  Here we have a novel that is set just as this is happening; we have a character who is unearthing the enthralling past of these areas which are now war-torn from intervention and internal turmoil and conflict.  And hardly for the last time, it is all about oil.  While set firmly in the past, this book also sheds light on how we got to this point in history ourselves.  I think it also shows how our disregard for history leads us to repeat the mistakes we have made over and over again.

In conclusion, this is definitely a book worth reading.  I highly recommend it, especially to those who love history and/or secretly wish they could be on Time Team.  While I wait for that day to come, I’ll be seeking out more of Barry Unsworth’s works.

IndieBound | Powell’s | Amazon

We are having internet trouble.  I may not be online much or at all until Monday afternoon because it keeps going out on me.  I have scheduled a review for every day and I’m crossing my fingers that it will work for longer than half an hour this time, but I can’t promise.  If you have a blog post that you want me to read, please do link it here and I’ll make my way over on Monday.  Thanks for understanding, everyone!

Even though Honour is not nearly as beautiful as her two older sisters Grace and Hope, she has always been nicknamed Beauty, a contradiction she frequently shrugs off.  Beauty loves learning and reading and takes great pride in the books she owns; she can own quite a few due to the wealth of her father.  While her sisters meet potential husbands, Beauty reads.  All this changes when their father’s fleet is lost at sea.  Not only has his wealth vanished but so has Grace’s fiance.  The family moves inland, away from the city, to a small town on the outskirts of an enchanted forest.  When Beauty’s father inadvertantly meets a beast, he must promise to remain forever unless one of his daughters is willing to take his place.  Beauty knows her duty and heads into the forest for the confrontation of her life and the making of her future.

I’m very excited about fairy tale retellings these days and I have informally decided that Robin McKinley is the queen of that special feel which only fairy tales have.  She hasn’t let me down yet, and she certainly didn’t in this one.  When I was a little girl, Beauty and the Beast  was one of my favorite movies.  I love it now because it’s a love story which does not, for once, revolve around beautiful people, but rather personalities.  Beauty must be strong enough to face the Beast and tame him, but he must have an extraordinary personality for her to see past his hideous appearance and love him.  I love this dynamic, sucker as I am for romance, and McKinley does it SO. WELL.

I’m assuming everyone knows how the story goes, so I’m not going to try and avoid spoilers, especially because my absolute favorite part was the ending.  As we all know, when Beauty admits that she loves the Beast and wants to marry him, he becomes human again.  Her shock at his newly attractive appearance - and insistence that she couldn’t marry him, he wasn’t her Beast - was a splendid and moving scene.  I could completely believe in this love story and I adored the ethereal feel which Robin McKinley is so, so good at.  Yes, I’m in love with this book, and I’m not really ashamed to admit it!

A couple of little things also swept me away in the telling of this story.  I loved that the Beast’s library was full of books from the future.  It fit in with the magical setting and allowed Beauty plenty of distraction.  I think this is meant to be a medieval or early modern world, so books in print would be quite rare at that time.  Secondly, I love that Beauty became beautiful as she fell in love and the story went on.  She seems young in the beginning, but as time goes on she grows up and grows into her body, which I think is a wonderful physical representation for the growth of her feelings and love towards the Beast.

Anyway, I will now stop my endless rambling and just tell you that you really ought to read Robin McKinley if you haven’t before.  I missed her as a child and I regret this so much!  I’m loving my discovery of her books and I hope that you would, too.  Highly, highly recommended for anyone who loves fantasy or fairy tales.

Available via IndieBound, Powell’s, Amazon, and Amazon UK.

Miss Anne Jewell is a teacher at Miss Martin’s School for Girls.  She is beautiful, beloved by all of her friends, but has a son, David, by a man who was not her husband and is thus branded by society.  When Joshua, a cousin of her son’s father and a great help to her, offers to take David and Anne to Wales for a month of summer vacation, Anne can’t refuse for her son’s sake and hesitates when she is treated as a guest rather than as the servant she considers herself.  Sydnam Butler is a war veteran, missing an arm and an eye and scarred down half of his body.  Now he is steward for his friend’s estate and dreams of buying a small property from him, believing that no woman will love him when children run in fear of his face.  Both Anne and Sydnam must heal and understand in order to embrace the feelings that they unexpectedly discover for each other.

Mary Balogh, please welcome yourself to my favorite authors list.  I loved this book.  It’s not at all what I’d expect from a romance novel.  It’s not all passion and sex; that’s fine sometimes, but when it comes to emotional intensity, this book completely astonished me.  Both of the main characters are very scarred, Sydnam on the outside and Anne on the inside from the rape which led to David.  Here they must overcome the belief they share and learn that they are good enough and that they can love and be loved.  They become friends first and developing attraction comes later.  It’s so refreshing to read a novel without stunningly beautiful main characters.  I didn’t realize how great that would be until this book came along.

Somewhat surprisingly, I also loved David’s part in this novel.  He is a child but it’s easy to see his influence on not only his mother but on Sydnam, forcing Sydnam to break a little out of his shell and try to be different.  There is a little subplot rotating around Sydnam’s artistic ability and how he can learn to paint again with his left hand, something he thought he would never do.  No one is allowed to remain comfortable in this book, everyone has to take a step outside of their comfort zone and learn to compromise to be with other people, which is what love is all about.

Oh, I can’t gush enough about this one.  Even the sex is quite subdued if that’s what puts you off romances.  This is an emotionally satisfying, moving read that I think is worth a try by everyone.

Available via IndieBound, Powell’s, Amazon, and Amazon UK.

Well, it’s the end of June!  Did I manage the Summer Reading Blitz hosted by Shauna and complete 30 books in 30 days?

Yes, I did!  I’m not going to link any of these to my reviews because I’m exhausted and because I’m a little lazy.  Most of them haven’t been posted anyway, I have 20 reviews in the queue and 8 to write.  That’s what happens when you read too fast.  Dates are finishing dates only, some took me longer than others and I didn’t hesitate to read shorter books while reading longer ones.

119. Songs My Mother Never Taught Me - Selcuk Altun - 1 Jun - 212 pages
120. Joker One - Donovan Campbell - 1 Jun - 307 pages
121. Her Secret Fantasy - Gaelen Foley - 2 Jun - 401 pages
122. The Last Witch of Langenburg - Thomas Robisheaux - 2 Jun - 338 pages
123. Out from Boneville - Jeff Smith - 3 Jun - 138 pages
124. Uglies - Scott Westerfeld - 4 Jun - 425 pages
125. When the Duke Returns - Eloisa James - 4 Jun - 375 pages
126. The wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and six more - Roald Dahl - 5 Jun - 239 pages
127. The Lieutenant’s Lover - Harry Bingham - 8 Jun - 442 pages
128. The Heart of the Night - Judith Lennox - 10 Jun - 500 pages
129. The Great Cow Race - Jeff Smith - 10 Jun - 132 pages
130. Married By Mistake - Abby Gaines - 12 Jun - 268 pages
131. Into the Beautiful North - Luis Alberto Urrea - 12 Jun - 334 pages
132. My Lord John - Georgette Heyer - 13 Jun - 430 pages
133. Everything and the Moon - Julia Quinn - 13 June - 372 pages
134. Shadows and Strongholds - Elizabeth Chadwick - 14 Jun - 564 pages
135. A Pearl in the Storm - Toni Murden McClure - 15 Jun - 292 pages
136. Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue - 16 Jun - 422 pages
137. The Road Home - Rose Tremain - 16 Jun - 365 pages
138. On Beauty - Zadie Smith - 18 Jun - 422 pages
139. Land of Marvels - Barry Unsworth - 22 Jun - 287 pages
140. Blood Bound - Patricia Briggs - 23 Jun - 326 pages
141. Ink Exchange - Melissa Marr - 24 Jun - 312 pages
142. Crossed - Nicole Galland - 25 Jun - 642 pages
143. Simply Magic - Mary Balogh - 26 Jun - 326 pages
144. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins - 26 Jun - 454 pages
145. The Incendiary’s Trail - James McCreet - 27 Jun - 356 pages
146. Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton - 28 Jun - 266 pages
147. A Little Bit Wicked - Victoria Alexander - 29 Jun - 359 pages
148. Shadows Return - Lynn Flewelling - 29 Jun - 522 pages

A couple of things please me about this list.  First and foremost is that I only read 6 romance novels.  That’s the most out of any month this year, but I was expecting to read a lot more because they are quick; I can read an average sized one in about 2 hours.  I do have 2 graphic novels on my list as well.  I did, however, manage to read 11 books with 400+ pages.  I think that’s pretty impressive!  I am happy to be able to do something else with my free time though, and I’m very much looking forward to the chunksters I’ve started or am about to start now.

We are also officially at the halfway point of the year.  I doubt anyone remembers but I set my goal at 200 books this year.  Can I imagine not hitting 200 books at this point when I’ve already read 148?  Well, no.  It was a challenge at the time though.  I’m not sure whether to up my goal or not.  Time will tell.

Finally, why am I exhausted today?  I went on a field trip with other students at the Centre for Medieval Studies!  It was a wonderful day but has left me worn out.  Here’s a 13th century manor house, Markenfield Hall, to liven up this post:

It even has a moat, which you can’t see well in this picture, between the fence and the bushes.  I would like to live there but, well, I guess we can’t all marry earls.  ;)

In 1940, Greek geologist Athos was digging in a war-stricken Polish city when a small boy emerged from the mud; no one realized that he was alive until he started to cry.  Jakob was only seven years old and his entire family had been taken and probably killed by the Nazis.  Athos decides to risk his own life by taking the boy home to Greece, where they settle, hide, starve, but begin to know each other and develop a relationship and education.  We follow Jakob into adulthood, watching him write poetry that reflects their haunted past as well as their uncertain future.

This book may have been slightly too literary for me.  I loved the idea of the story but I’m never all that fond of books told in abstracts.  Perhaps I read it too soon after The English Patient, which I still haven’t found the words to review; both books are similar in their slow exploration of the effects of war on people’s psyche and in their meandering focus on people rather than plot.  I’m not sure I’m always in a mood for such a read.  A week later, however, I find myself pondering this book, wondering about Jakob.

Jakob’s transition from lost and lonely boy to educated, confident, loving man is quite a fascinating one.  We first witness Jakob’s life, then the life of another man who is significantly influenced by him and by the war.  There are multiple threads running through the novel; perhaps the most important, I felt, were the bonds of love.  Jakob loves Athos; he loves his wives; he loves his parents and perhaps most especially, he loves his lost sister Bella, who he manages to carry in his heart throughout his life.  

I was a bit perplexed by the addition of the second character in the final 100 pages of the book.  I wasn’t as interested in him as I was in Jakob.  I can see the parallels between them and I understand the effect of showing the significance Jakob had after his death, but I felt there were unanswered questions and I wanted the answers.  This book would be better read with other people in order to think and discuss more closely its literary significance.  I’m sure there is a great deal here that I am not picking up on my own.  I’m planning to read it again and see what I can find the next time.

Available via Indiebound, Powell’s, Amazon, and Amazon UK.

Or so it feels!  But first, a couple of quick notes.  If you haven’t seen the book drive Amy and Lenore are having for Nothing But Ghosts by Beth Kephart, go check it out.  This is a fantastic way to show our support for authors while having a chance to win some prizes.  The book is only $12.23 on Amazon!

Secondly, I wanted to show off my progress in my new quest to read my oldest books while also getting through my library books and review copies.  I started two weeks ago, and here’s how the pile looked then:

Today, this is how it looks:

I’m a little absurdly pleased with myself!  I’m still trying to read my older review copies as well.  I’m going home in 2 weeks and will have an avalanche of them to read very quickly, so I have to get these out of the way first.  Stone’s Fall has been on the top for a while now because I’m still trying to read 30 books in June.  So I’ve pretty much abandoned the pile this week because I actually fell behind and had to try to read 4 books in 2 days.  I managed it, but only because I got an order of mainly YA books that I could race through.  I have 2 1/2 books to go, but after that I’m going to go right for all of these chunksters.

Right now I’m reading Possession by A.S. Byatt.  Jennifer at The Literate Housewife and I are reading and reviewing this together, about which I’m very excited, so I’m attempting to go a little more slowly and actually think more about what I’m reading.  It’s not hard with this book, though, because I feel like it was written just for me.  Obviously, it wasn’t, as I was probably not even born when Byatt came up with the idea and I was four years old when it won the Booker Prize.  I’ve only read 100 pages but already it’s tapping deep into so many things I love.  I don’t talk about it much on this blog, but if I’d chosen literature rather than history I’d have gone straight for 19th century British authors.  There is something about this century in England that entrances me.  To make it even better, the book in the modern day is about two academics researching the lives of two (fictional) 19th century British poets and their possession of their biographical subjects.  I’m writing my own essentially biographical study and could completely see myself remaining in this vein in academics should I choose to continue.  It’s amazing how you form a bond with people long dead, becoming fond of them despite their faults and feeling that you know them, only to discover someone else probably feels exactly the same way as you with a slightly different opinion that makes you angry.  It’s so fascinating.  Of course the book is a romance as well, and although I haven’t gotten to that part yet, I can already see who the players are.  As I said, it’s like the book was written with me in mind!  I adore it already and I can’t wait to read more later on.

Have you ever felt like a book was written just for you?

Thanks to the flood of illegal immigrants into the US, small towns in Mexico are left with a lack of young men.  For Nayeli and her friends Yolo and Vampi, this is a serious problem, especially when banditos arrive in the town to scare the women. After watching the film The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides that she is going to go to the US, into the beautiful north, to find seven men to protect her town and revitalize the lives of the women therein.  Armed with cash, a pretty smile, and three friends, Nayeli heads off on a bus into a journey neither she nor I would have imagined.

With a few notable exceptions, novels set in Latin America tend to frustrate me.  Largely, this is because of the magical realism that many of those authors employ.  In general, I prefer novels to be either all fantasy or all real, but magical realism treads an uneasy line between the two, and for some reason I just don’t like it.  So when my online book club chose this novel for June, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to think of it.  In the end, I ended up on the edge myself between enjoying it and finding myself dissatisfied with it.

There are many things to enjoy in this novel.  Urrea’s writing is beautiful and evoked perfectly for me small-town Mexico, a garbage dump on the edge of the border, and American cities that I’ve never been to.  I was really moved by how difficult life is for illegal immigrants and how cruel the Border Patrol is towards them.  I’m not very comfortable with our stance towards illegal immigrants, although I don’t know how to fix it, so the struggles portrayed in the book really made me think about the problem.  It was interesting to see how in different locations, Mexicans are treated differently.  Lastly, there isn’t really much of that magical realism in this book.  Slightly unrealistic situations are portrayed but nothing that is actually impossible.  It still has a bit of that feel to it, but overall I was happy about this absence.

On the other hand, certain things bothered me about the book.  Nayeli’s journey seemed a little outrageous, especially given that the only threat was two men who refused to pay for their food.  We know that they are banditos because we are told, but they did not seem to be terrifying.  Other events in this book follow a similar unlikely pattern.  Some of the passages in the book are in Spanish, which I don’t speak, although I mostly skimmed them and tried to get the jist of the conversation.  Perhaps more fatally, I didn’t really understand or like many of the characters or their motivations.  I came closest to liking Nayeli, but then towards the end of the book she has an experience and reacts in a way that saddened me; I felt that for her, the journey was not fulfilling.  The secondary characters often irritated me; Nayeli’s friends are largely caricatures and it’s hard to feel that we know anything about them outside of their shell.  Even the missionary, Matt, was unappealing once we met him and seemed at total odds with the man all the girls had fallen in love with.

Despite all that, I did enjoy it.  I read it in a few hours between errands and never felt bored or that I wished I’d brought another book.  It was only afterwards that I began to feel uncertain about it and think through everything that I have mentioned.  I would still recommend it, especially if you like novels by other Latin American writers like Gabriel García Márquez.

Our book club discussion was really interesting.  More of us than I had expected felt lukewarm about the book; they didn’t like it, or they were like me and liked it but had some problems with it overall.  We were all most moved by the issue of illegal immigrants as portrayed by the book; some of us had heard about the garbage dumps and some of us had not.  A few of us were stymied by the way that people were able to recognize them as illegals; there are plenty of Latin Americans here legally and there is no real way to tell the difference.  We had a great discussion about it and I suspect other book clubs would too.

IndieBound | Powell’s | Amazon

Mercy Thompson is an auto mechanic.  She’s also a shape shifter and lives next door to a sexy werewolf, Adam, in a world where supernatural creatures are being forced out of hiding due to advancing science.  When a new, teenage werewolf who isn’t affiliated with Adam’s pack shows up in Mercy’s shop, she finds herself in the middle of both a werewolf war and a love triangle as she goes back into her own past for some answers.

I very much enjoyed this book.  I liked this version of AU America; every urban fantasy has a slightly different twist on it and this one is great.  It makes perfect sense to me that werewolves, vampires, and the like are about to be outed via modern science.  If we can cure diseases, surely we can investigate other physical phenomena.  Since most urban fantasy gathers werewolves into packs like this one, it was a wonderful move to set Mercy slightly outside the pack.  She turns into a coyote but shares few of the advantages that werewolves have; she is not necessarily more human than they are but she is one step outside of their society while still being in it enough to be a part of the action.

Mercy herself is a great character.  She is brave, a bit stubborn, and clearly a tomboy, but still has a romantic heart and is very easy to relate to.  I had a soft spot for her the minute I learned she’d majored in history.  She’s determined to get to the truth of the mystery she’s unearthed and she doesn’t back down when threats emerge.  I think her struggles with the men in her life only enrich her character more; we learn about her history and simultaneously can witness for ourselves just how much she’s grown and changed.

The plot rockets along in this short book, which comes in under 300 pages; there were a couple of times when I felt that Mercy was explaining a little too much but as something of a set-up for the world, I’m used to it in the first book of a series.  I’ve been reading a lot of these lately.  By the time I hit the middle, I needed to know what happened, and by the end, I didn’t want to give it up.

I can’t wait to read Blood Bound.  I immediately went and ordered it online and now I’m just waiting impatiently for it to arrive.  I really, really enjoyed this book.  I can’t wait for the relationships between the characters to deepen, for another story to start, or to learn more about the world.  If you like urban fantasy, I highly recommend giving this series a shot.

Buy it from Amazon, Amazon UK, Powell’s, or IndieBound.

From the back cover:

John, Duke of Bedford, grew to manhood fighting for his father, King Henry IV of England, on the wild and lawless Northern Marches.  He was a prince of the royal blood, loyal, strong, and the greatest ally that his brother - the future Henry V - was to have.  Filled with the clash of bitter rivalries and deadly power struggles, this is Georgette Heyer’s last and most ambitious novel, bringing to life a character and a period she found irresistibly attractive.

I really wanted to like this novel.  I went into it expecting to like it.  I have really enjoyed the other works that I’ve read by Georgette Heyer and as you all know, I love historical fiction.  I just could not love this book, though, much as I tried.

First there is the language.  Heyer appears to have really tried to write this novel in the language of the fifteenth century.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the way she intended.  Instead, it feels stilted and unfamiliar, even to one who has spent hours trying to figure out what fifteenth century people meant when they used all these words that have fallen out of the language or when they used words which don’t mean what they now mean.  I think the fifty to seventy-five years in between my work and this book make a difference because these are unquestionably proper words, but I was unfamiliar with them and they make the book a slow, slow read.

If a reader of this book has no knowledge of the history or people involved, it will constitute even more of a struggle.  Even though I have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of Henry IV’s reign, I had to refer to the family tree several times and even wished I’d taken notes so I could keep track of the various names used to refer to one person.  This is the first instance that I’ve wished for a character list, which I’ve seen in a few fantasy novels, just so I could remember who people were.

Those two problems combined with the fact that this book has no real plot and is merely a meandering through history, which isn’t even complete, made this book a slow one for me.  In the end, I didn’t see the point.  I didn’t find it enjoyable and I wasn’t searching for a resolution to a story because I knew there wasn’t one.  I think that if someone was extremely interested in the reign of Henry IV’s reign and wanted to read this alongside some comprehensive history over a lengthy period of time, it would work better.  It is historically accurate to the best of my knowledge, but I guess this just goes to show that it also takes a well told story for a compelling work of historical fiction.  I wish Heyer had applied her considerable talents, so clearly on display in her Regencies, to this novel as well.  I would recommend those instead.

IndieBound | Powell’s | Amazon