A Couple of links

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I have reviews to post but I'm feeling lazy. So instead:

1) According to US Weekly – Obama is reading the Twilight books with his daughter (via MTV movies blog):

 "President-Elect Barack Obama truly has a full plate. Revitilize a sinking economy. Energize a nation. Rehabilitate America’s fragile standing in the world. Oh, and get through four “Twilight” books with his youngest daughter.

Yes, according to the latest issue of US Weekly, Stephenie Meyer has a couple fans who will be moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in a couple months. The magazine reports that the President-Elect and his ten-year-old daughter Malia often bond over addictive book series, “They read all the Harry Potter books together and have moved on to the Twilight series.”

 

2) Holly Blacks hidden library @ The Steampunk Home (thanks for the link Angiegirl!). What's crazy is I saw an episode of Extreme Makeover Home edition with something like this *yesterday* and have been talking about it since.

 

Holly Black in her "hidden library"
Holly Black in her "hidden library"

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Shomi contest winner

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Huh, check this out, the winner of the Shomi writing contest was announced as Gayle Williams. The blurb for her book sounds pretty interesting (via Romantic Reads):

"TSUNAMI BLUE By Gayle Williams

The book takes place after a number of major tsunamis have reduced much of the world to a series of islands.  Kathryn "Blue" O'Malley, known as Tsunami Blue, is a voice of hope across the radio airwaves, for she has a special ability to predict where the next tsunami will hit and can warn her fellow survivors.  She lives alone on an island with only her dog Max for company, hoping to stay under the radar of the Runners, pirates of the new world order who would use her gift only for their own gain.  When a Runner washes up on her shores, she guardedly takes him in–not knowing the pirates are just as much after him as they are her.

Gayle Williams lives on a small island off the coast of Washington state.  This is her debut novel, and was heavily inspired by a trip to Southeast Asia in 2004.  Her plane landed 12 hours after the historic tsunami devastated the area."

I think I'll put this on the list of books to look out for.

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Austenland by Shannon Hale

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Austenland: A Novel
Austenland: A Novel
Shannon Hale

Shannon Hale is another one of those authors whose back-list I want to read, just haven't gotten around to it. Before Austenland I've only read young adult books by her. Just looked it up, yes she as mostly written young adult books. I have only read The Goose Girl, but mean to pick up Enna Burning and The Princess Academy one day. Anyway, when I saw Austenland on display in Barnes and Noble, my gasp was rather audible. An adult book, Austen AND Shannon Hale?

So I kept going to the bookstore and visiting this book, but thinking about my TBR and putting it back down. Yeah, I do that with a lot of books. I visit them at the bookstore and think of how I have to finish what I have…

 After getting into an Austen remake kick with the Melissa Nathan book I read, I went to the library and picked this up (but I have also ordered it online).

This is a bit different from the previous chick-lit + Austen related books I've read as in it doesn't really retell Pride and Prejudice, and it doesn't have any time travel to see Mr. Darcy, but we do have a Jane Austen obsessed heroine, single, who decides to go on an Austen themed holiday. This reminded me a bit of Me and Mr. Darcy, except instead of going on a tour, Jane Hayes goes and lives at Pembrook Park, where actors play the roles of Austen era gentility, and guests' dreams of a pretend romance while wearing Regency clothes come true. This expensive vacation was willed to Jane by her great-aunt so she can get over her very serious view of relationships (she starts off by hoping for forever, and after disappointments mount, starts to rely more and more on the fantasy of Mr. Darcy). Jane Hayes becomes Jane Erstwhile, back from the New World and visiting her aunt Saffonia and her husband Sir Templeton, and meets other guests staying with her "aunt".

Overall: This was a fun read. I found it a bit short though, only 194 pages in my copy, which is more of a young adult length, but it was still a good read. Jane is an amusing character – very forthright with her feelings and quite quick on her feet. Some of her dialogue made me laugh. The book was segmented by short paragraphs about boyfriends Jane has had in her life (13 so far), which added to the amusement and explained some of Jane's character. Because her love interests in this book were both actors (a Mr. Nobley who finds her "impertinant" and Martin Jasper, who breaks role and secretly watches basketball with her in his room), we don't see very much about their backstory, except for a bit when Jane uses her journalist friend's connections. I think that adds to the surreal feeling of – is she really doing this? Pretending? And the oddity of a whole household of people pretending to be in the Regency era for a few rich people's amusement. Jane struggles with this throughout the book, but manages to still be herself while in the ridiculous surroundings.

A complaint I see a lot from people when reading this type of book is how cliched it is – repetition of the same stories created by Austen in the modern world, or trying to continue her books in a bad fan-fiction way. I admit, if that's not your thing, you may not like this book, because this had a lot more references to the BBC adaptations than to the actual books. I'm not sure that accuracy is the point though. This is just a fun story, and I think it does point out the value or real life over fantasy. And while Jane she does meet someone who she at first considers rather Darcy-esque, we don't have an as obvious Lizzy/Darcy parallel as in other books. OK there is one, but it's not bad. It was a fresh spin and I enjoyed it.

Hale's Austenland webpage

An Excerpt

Alternate endings!! <— spoilers therein

Also reviewed:

@ The Written Word (she liked it)

@ Em's Bookshelf (also liked it)

@ AustenBlog (hated it!! Well, I'm giving you a second opinion here).

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The Nanny by Melissa Nathan

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The Nanny
The Nanny
Melissa Nathan

Like Linnea Sinclair, I think I'm just going to HAVE to read everything this author has ever written. After I read Pride, Prejudice and Jasmine Field, I went online and got a copy of Persuading Annie, the second one of her modern retellings of Jane Austen. Persuading Annie is a retelling of Persuasion. Meanwhile I also hopped to the library and borrowed The Nanny. Unfortunately, this is the only Melissa Nathan novel my library has, so I have to get her other two books The Waitress and The Learning Curve elsewhere.

This is I think Nathan's third novel and is her own story, not based on an Austen novel. I liked it probably a smidge less than Pride, Prejudice and Jasmine Field, but more than Persuading Annie.

The Nanny is about a twenty three year old nanny, Jo Green, who feels stuck in a rut with her life in Niblet-upon-Avon. Her boyfriend Shaun has proposed a few times, and each time she has turned him down, while her parents think he has never asked and keep wondering aloud what could be wrong and what he's waiting for. When Jo sees an ad for a nanny in London, she decides to apply for the job and just have a change of pace. She gets hired by Dick and Vanessa Fitzgerald, who have three children – eight year old Cassandra, six year old Zak and the youngest, Tallulah and gets sucked into their busy family life. To complicate matters Dick's sons from his first marriage arrive – his teen-aged son Toby and his grownup son Josh. Josh even moves in and sleeps in Jo's living room, and tensions mount.

Overall: This book started off a bit slowly as we got introduced to all the people in Jo's life, but everyone had their own personality and story within the book which made it enjoyable. We not only see Jo's struggle with her relationships but we also see complications in the marriage of Dick and Vanessa, Jo's parents and even the relationships among the kids. This ended up being a feel good story so things ended well for everyone involved, maybe in a too pat way, but it was just the type of book to cheer you up after a bad week. It did not feel short and fluffy, it felt like it had more depth than that, and it was a satisfying read. There are some comments here about being a working mother in need of a nanny, and family dynamics – the woman's role versus the man's, which made it a well thought out book for me. I also enjoyed the humor throughout the book – although sometimes the sarcasm was surprising, it was refreshing to read a book about the trials of parenting that come along with the joys, and to see a parent who loved their kids but may not be cut out for staying at home with them. The romance in this book was sweet as well.

P.S. This was written in third person (FYI for those who hate reading in first person)!

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Darcy’s Story by Janet Aylmer

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Darcy's Story
Darcy's Story
Janet Aylmer

This is probably going to be a Jane Austen week over here because I got into a strange kick that started with picking up Darcy's Story and Pride, Prejudice and Jasmine Field for a dollar at the library store.

"When Elizabeth Bennet first met Mr. Darcy she found him proud, distant, and rude – despite the other ladies' admiration of his estate in Derbyshire and ten thousand pounds a year. But what is Mr. Darcy thinking?"

Unlike the previous book I read, this isn't a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, but rather a retelling of the same story from the point of view of Darcy.

My thoughts: Well, it keeps consistent with the plot of Pride and Prejudice, but it lacks something. Almost every scene is exactly the same as Pride and Prejudice, at least the ones with Darcy in them, so I got the feeling that I was just rereading the original story and not seeing anything new – if you just finished the original Jane Austen work, I would not recommend picking this book up right away, it will feel like deja vu. The dialogue is pretty much cut and pasted from Jane Austen's work, and when it isn't it is summarized in detail. I understand that this author wanted to keep as close to the original as possible, but she made the book so safe it was boring. She filled all the "spaces" where Austen's dialogue didn't exist with mundane details of day to day life like how they travelled from London and what stops were made. Otherwise she described emotions with telling not showing. Things did not have the same feel as Austen's writing, which was really underlined when you saw her dialogue in this setting. Aylmer also repeated the same dialogue over and over as Darcy remembered conversations. Even his conversation with his aunt when she confronts him about an engagement to Elizabeth just has her repeating the conversation she has with Elizabeth line for line! In italics too!

 I really wish this author tried to bring in more of her own imagination into the story instead of relying so much on the original. The only things new here were a couple of scenes where Darcy talks to Georgiana or his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam. There is also a brief description of him discovering that Mr Wickham was secretly trying to get his sister's inheritance and quickly stopping it. Otherwise, the book is a quick OK read, but not memorable. I also felt that Darcy was not as strong as he could have been – in this version we see a sympathetic character with faults, trying to do the right thing, but Aylmer really repeats over and over his problems with conversing with people he just met and his jealousy of Wickham, Charles Bingley and his cousin for their comparable ease at this skill. Once was ok, but several times made him sound very insecure and lacked subtlety.

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Magic Strikes / Other Ilona Andrews goodies

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Magic Strikes cover
Magic Strikes cover

For Ilona Andrews fans looking forward to the third book in the Kate Daniels series (the authors' website says 4 books are contracted so far), Ilona Andrews blog had an excerpt of Chapter 1:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

It looks good! Cannot wait till this book comes out. Very much pre-ordering!

Meanwhile – a visit to the Ilona Andrews website shows some updates since I've been there last including some information about the next series they are working on – the Borderland series. There is an excerpt of Border Rose here.

And in the Free Fiction section I saw a new to me short story there "Days of Swine and Roses".

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Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field

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Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field: A Novel
Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field: A Novel
Melissa Nathan

This book is one of those modern day retellings of Pride and Prejudice. Jasmin Field (Jazz) is a reporter at a woman’s magazine who signed up for an audition for a one day “Pride and Prejudice” play, with director Harry Nobel. She finds Harry really arrogant and her contempt is cemented when she overhears him calling her “the Ugly Sister” compared to her actress sister George. What follows is a parallel of the Pride and Prejudice, which is very obvious considering the play and the title of the book, but there are several things I thought made things more interesting – the author focusses on the characters of Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, Mr. Bingley and Darcy more than others in the Jane Austen Novel and there are some twists to the Wickham scandal, the Bennet family and Mr. Collins.

Nits:

  • Well I saw reviews complaining about the main character being called “Jazz” and her best friend and sister were “Mo” and “George” – like there are too many cool names here. This didn’t bother me, but maybe avoid it if it’s a peeve.
  • There’s apparently a lot of swearing. I barely noticed though, I thought this was all part of Jazz’s lifestyle as a young woman with snarky female friends. They are all very blunt with each other.
  • This was my only really complaint: it was so obvious that the story paralleled the Jane Austen book, but the characters who were doing a play were rather oblivious except to kind of laugh when their words paralleled lines in the play maybe a couple of times. You have to suspend some disbelief here.

 

Good things:
OK, the rest of the book – I really liked it and enjoyed myself. I found it hard to put down. Even though I knew what was likely going to happen because I know the Pride and Prejudice story, I thought that Pride, Prejudice, and Jasmin Field was originally done and was humorous. It was very different from the original because of the modern setting, with Jazz/Lizzy having a job as a reporter and her work issues, while Harry’s actor background is very different from the Darcy in Jane Austen’s book. It was fun to see Nathan’s creativity in translating the Austen book to this setting. I thought the romance was very sweet too. Jazz is often really angry at Harry and he’s a bit intimidated, but she doesn’t realize this, so when they get together at the end, it was nicely done, and showed his insecurity. I also thought Nathan’s version of the scene where Lizzy first sees Darcy’s house was very different – you wouldn’t easily guess it until you see it. So discovering what scenes translated to what was fun. I read this book in just a few hours and quickly googled the author as soon as I was done. I was really sad to find that Nathan died of cancer only a couple of years ago, but she has another Jane Austen based novel which I plan to read (Persuading Annie), as well as other books. I think I’m likely to go and devour her backlist, I think I found a new author I love. Judging from amazon though, it was definitely either loved it or hated it regarding this book. Don’t read it if you want something serious and similar to Austen, it’s more like irreverant, chick-lit Austen.

 

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The Adventures of Holly Hobbie by Richard Dubelman

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The Adventures of Holly Hobbie by Richard Dubelman
The Adventures of Holly Hobbie by Richard Dubelman

This was a nostalgic read – I checked this book from my school library when I was a kid and I couldn't remember the title or author and made a post on whatwasthatbook to find out what it was. I remember the cover having a picture of a girl with a bonnet and a pyramid, and I remember time travel and light falling in such a way to reveal something about why the pyramids were created, but that was it.

The Adventures of Holly Hobbie was based on the character called of "Holly Hobbie", a bonnet and rag-dress wearing girl named after her creator. In this story the Dutton family is in mourning after the disappearance and believed death of Melville Dutton, an archaeologist working to find a lost ancient city in Guatemala. His daughter Liz is still unconvinced that her father is dead and one night the ghost of another girl, Holly Hobbie, an ancestor living in a painting at her family's farm appears and agrees to help Liz. Through some cunning and adults who didn't seem *that* alarmed about the missing girls travelling on their own, Liz and Holly manage to travel from Massachusetts to New York to Washington D.C, and then to Mexico and Guatamala  investigating what her father was working on and discovering who could be involved in his disappearance.

Overall: Despite this book being a bit dated (it has lots of color illustrations that have people in very old fashioned clothes), and the strangeness (Is this a more paranoid view we have now?) of two teenage girls with so much independance, it was a pretty good read. I know why I liked the book so much – it's the type of book that teaches you along with having an exciting story. While Holly and Liz went about their adventures the reader picks up information about history and the Maya. I learned a few things reading it. It felt like the writer Richard Dubelman really researched his subject and wanted kids to learn about the Maya culture. It did not feel dumbed down either, and it was refreshing to have two smart girls as heroines. I also noticed that the writer had a film background as a producer, and I thought to myself that the book does read as an 80's kids adventure movie, sort of like "Escape to Witch Mountain" or something, I could see it in my mind's eye complete with a predictable bad guy. Still, this held up surprisingly well to time, and while it has a young adult audience it was well written and educational. This book is out of print but used copies are available.

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Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky

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Girl's Guide To Witchcraft (Red Dress Ink)
Girl's Guide To Witchcraft (Red Dress Ink)
Mindy Klasky

This is the first book in a series about a librarian who discovers a room full of books on witchcraft, and then learns that she has magical ability. 

The Girl's Guide to Witchcraft is from the Red Dress imprint, which is Harlequin's "chick lit" line, so this book has a combination of chick lit along with the urban fantasy/ paranormal elements that you'd expect from the title. Our heroine Jane Madison juggles problems with finding a decent boyfriend (her ex for many years turned out to be a huge jerk who was cheating on her with several people), while trying to figure out her magic. Jane stumbles on her talent when her first spell woke her familiar – a cat statue that turned into a snarky, gay man (Neko). This brings another man to her door – her warder David. Meanwhile, Jane has a crush on an assistant professor named Jason who often researched at her library who she calls her Imaginary Boyfriend.

Overall: It was a pleasant read, but I did find myself putting it down and doing other things before coming back to it later, so it had a sort of sedate pace. I enjoyed it, and I liked Jane so I'll probably read the next book soon. The strength in the writing is really the relationships Jane has with her friends and family, with a couple of magical hijinks Jane gets herself into, her man trouble, and the return of her estranged mother to add interest.

Jane really does seem to have a "good girl" personality – she loves her work at the library and tries to help it with it's financial problems, she has a good relationship with her grandmother who raised her, and she has routine girl's night with her long-time best friend Melissa. She's a typical single woman juggling work and family while also looking for someone to share her life with. The only problem is that Jane isn't always as aware as she thinks she is, especially about relationships with men. Her taste isn't great and I felt that she was rather blind sometimes. I have the feeling that Jane is going to remain oblivious to the fact that David, her warder, is someone who she fits with a lot better than who she goes after for the length of this series. The question as to who Jane will finally get together with (I predict David despite both their denials in this book) will likely not be resolved until the final book, but I'm not sure how many books are in this series. 

Excerpt of this book.

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