Boardwalk Empire: the Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson

Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson first crossed my radar when I watched the exceptional HBO miniseries of the same name back in the winter.

I was immediately transplanted to the heyday of prohibition and spun into a world with an infrastructure of greed, twisted politics, sex and money. A moral free-space, the corrupt nature of all of the main players in the series and their seemingly conscience-free zone propelled me to want to know more.

At the center of the HBO series and at the center of the high times mentioned in the book’s title is Nucky Johnson: a highly charismatic, outwardly charitable and brilliant businessman who not only played to the hands of widows and orphans; but also made rattling connections with mobsters such as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone.
Clad in one of his dozens of pinstripe suits and with his trademark red carnation, Nucky “The Czar of the Atlantic City Ritz” owned an entire city. He spent money as quickly as he made it and his generosity to the poor of his city was only met in dividends by his passion for wine, women and entertainment.


A powder blue rolls Royce was his transportation, his fitness regime was carried out in elite hotel indoor swimming pools and he breakfasted on steak and eggs at noon. His life is a fascinating one (played to great dimensional measure by Steve Buscemi in the series).

Aside from the mid-section of the book which delights in extracting all of the luxurious excess of a city stripped of any legal or moral obligation, is the countless years of labour that went into establishing Atlantic City as one of the world’s first successful vacation spots. A veritable Disneyland that enticed workers from the city to save and spend their last dimes on the excessive trinkets and treats that establishments along the infamous boardwalk made you believe you needed.

Workers would save for a year to take their family to the beach for a week. New Yorkers would steal one of the 95 trains in and out of Atlantic City to savour a few precious hours of gambling, games and booze and all who worked and thrived there partook in its luxurious, neon delights.

What I found most fascinating in the book was the exposition of the lives of the thriving Black community. It was in Atlantic City that they were given stations above the (sadly) usual domestic service sphere popular as employment in the years following the Civil War. Though they were reduced to a segregated beach and school rooms, the Black Community of Atlantic City had the chance to earn respectable money and varied positions. Being such, hundreds of African Americans flocked to the edge of the Boardwalk for a chance to make a better life for themselves and to utilize the trade skills they honed during the treacherous years of slavery.

When the book talks of the double standard set by journalists who boasted of the need to rid Atlantic City of its Black workers; while failing to realize that it was on the shoulders of these workers that the tottering empire was built, the reader is forced to digest yet another jolt of a moment in history rendered shocking in its limitation, prejudice and incomprehensive cruelty.


The narrative in the story is excessively readable and Johnson’s passion and fascination with the history of this port town is infectious.

So many lives were wasted after years of excess. When the Depression hit and the American populous was stripped of any hope of vacation or amusement, Atlantic City began to crumble. When Prohibition ended (Atlantic City’s one succinct and consistent advantage wrought by racketeers and smugglers for years), the once lavish economy experienced its ultimate downfall.

It is hard to believe that such a society existed and thrived under the watchful eye of law enforcement and politics. The corruption of both sides and the blind eyes turned in trade of power, money and greed model a 20th Century Sodom and Gommorah.

I was absolutely riveted.

So, read this and watch the series and revel in the high times and even lower times of one of the most excessive decades in history.

Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions by Max Lucado

From the Publisher: We have questions. Child-like inquiries. And deep, heavy ones. In more than twenty-five years of writing and ministry, Max Lucado has been the receiving line for thousands of such questions. The questions come in letters, e-mails, even on Dunkin Donuts napkins. In Max on Life he offers thoughtful answers to more than 150 of the most pressing questions on topics ranging from hope to hurt, from home to the hereafter.
Max writes about the role of prayer, the purpose of pain, and the reason for our ultimate hope. He responds to the day-to-day questions—parenting quandaries, financial challenges, difficult relationships—as well as to the profound: Is God really listening?

Max Lucado’s He Still Moves Stones was the first work of Christian Living/ Christian non-fiction I had ever read.

My minister dad had left the book at home with his sermon notes and I was sick with the flu and reached for it on the coffee table because it was there. I was 11. But, Max Lucado has a way of speaking directly and easily to his readers, using simple analogies and never falling into condescension. I expected the same when I cracked open Max on Life Max’s Insights on Questions asked him by Christians in his congregation and beyond.

Max does not shirk from the easiest or trickiest question. Nor does he play devil’s advocate; nor does he blanket any answer with “ you should believe….” He answers straightly. Using scripture (always), using anecdotes ( when needed). I have read several books of this ilk ( a good representation is Eric Metaxas’ Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About God ( but were afraid to ask )) and what strikes me about Lucado is how greatly he distances personal experience to answer candidly. Sure, he draws on his own emotions and convictions; but this book could easily have fallen into “Well, when I was struggling…”etc., etc., This is not Max’s autobiography. What he leaves out in terms of personal example he makes up for by starkly pulling back a curtain and delving succinctly into the questions asked.

These are universal and familiar questions: about family, suffering, hope, destruction, God in a Godless world. To many, you will have heard these and seemingly every answer to them before. What is comforting about Lucado’s approach is that he speaks to you exactly as if you approached him for coffee and he was interposing as minister/guide. He handles tough questions on heaven/hell (yep, Rob Bell, you’re not the only one taking this on) and even speaks to homosexuality, divorce, pre-marital sex, abortion---- the major themes and questions which pervade 21st Century Christianity.

I was impressed by the realism in the book and Lucado's honesty: Lucado knows he cannot answer a question ( face it, what human can when dealing with questions of the universe), he accepts that we look through a glass dimly and provides the comfort of scripture as the slice of eternity or human comprehension can rely upon.

If you speak Christianese, this is a solid addition of Christian living for your collection.

I was grateful to Thomas Nelson for sending me this book

The Classics Circuit: Austen Vs. Dickens

I am defending Great Expectations on The Classics Circuit today! In the Austen Vs. Dickens Challenge

I have to tell you that these classics competitions are really tough for me. In some ways, it feels like picking a favourite friend… or favourite kind of ice cream.

Sure, sometimes I want peanut butter chocolate; other times I want cookies and cream--- both are equally worthy and wonderful.

I love me some Jane Austen---don’t get me wrong…. And I love me some all-of-Dickens: so much so that when people would ask me what my favourite Dickens’ novel was, for years, I couldn’t pinpoint. Sometimes it was Tale of Two Cities, often it was Our Mutual Friend, and Great Expectations always held a more-than-special place in my heart.

Forced to confront the fact that at some point I really should pick one, I decided to go with the one that reaches me on the deepest level. All have stories chock-full of brilliant characterization, sparkling sentimentality, wonderful wit and breathtaking materializations of London in all of its gritty glory--- all are like sinking into a favourite easy chair, re-visiting comforting friends, tea in hand.

But, Great Expectations brings to mind the most palpable of reading experiences. I feel greatly when I read Great Expectations, and I glean something different from between its pages upon every visit and am consistently fascinated by the style and the undercurrents of themes enforcing something more than Dickens’ pen-to-page brilliance.

At the forefront, Great Expectations is a relatively simple story. In fact, it is in this seeming simplicity that the reader is tricked into something more complex.

Philip “Pip” Pirrip stares at the headstones of his dead parents on the haunting marshes of the early 19th Century. (Yes, this is one of Dickens’ rare forays into historical fiction, as it is set years before its publication.) There, he is confronted by a veritable bogey-man: an escaped convict of the marshes who intimidates young Pip into near-jelly.

It is this fleeting instance that will shape Pip’s destiny.

Several of the tenets of Great Expectations are well-known to the greater populous: the unlucky-in-love Miss Havisham who wilts amidst the debris of her rotting, unforgotten jilt-at- the-altar; her ward, the icy Estella, well-raised in the art of scorning men and twisting them beneath her lily white finger, the kindly blacksmith Joe and his domineering wife, Mrs. Joe; the mysterious Magwitch; the troubling Mr. Jaggers and the extremely likeable Herbert Pocket.

Daring escapes, plot twists and family mysteries are uncovered at the backdrop of this keen bildungsroman. At the crux, Pip learns the downfalls of wealth and greed and awakens to the realization that with his great expectations a great price is exacted.

It is a bubbling and readable book and certainly one of Dickens’ shortest and most accessible. I think some of its resonance ( as one of the most beloved and adapted works of literature ) is its study in disillusionment and grace. Pip falls deeply into a trap of believing that which will make him whole is largely outside of himself and his meager upbringings. This is a commonality of the ages: a young man bred with good morals ( at least from the salt-of-the-earth blacksmith Joe) is tantalized by the prospect of something greater and holds no qualms at shirking his past, viewing his hometown as wreckage and turning into a veritable snob. What is heartbreaking is how those true to Pip are reluctant to dismiss him (even though, believe me, he can be, at times, the most absolute wretch).

It is these scenes: these confrontations between the now-gentlemanly (at least in form, if not in deed) Pip and the life he left behind as emblemized by Joe ,that wrench my heart.

This is a novel I grew up with and a novel that inspired me to face ugly truths about all of humanity and, on a searing micro level, about myself. We all fall into Pip’s trap when something shiny is dangled affront us; we would all rather believe that our benefactor will lead us to our heart’s desire, not regale us with a past twisted into treachery and mire. We all want to believe we were born for something more, greater than our circumstance, deserving of everything the wealthiest people have attained.

With that stirring of pride and that callous and complacent turning of our disdainful heads comes a stark and powerful realization: that humanity at its pulse is frail, that society ---gilded and obtuse--- exists to spin us into a web of our undoing…. That the greatest force in our life is redemptive love---acts of limitless grace---binding us back to a place where we belong. Where people love unconditionally. Where the mistakes made in youth are wiped clean of a slate by the gnarled hands of honest work and the belief in Love, God’s Will and Redemption.

The Art of Romance by Kaye Dacus

I was very excited to receive an advanced "sneak-peek" at The Art of Romance by author Kaye Dacus. I had heard a lot about the author's work before, and was refreshingly surprised by her candid voice on the role (or lack thereof) of single women in the Church and the marginalization of this group therein. Thus, I was excited to hear that one of the major trajectories in her novels was the exposition of older women ( not elderly, mind, yet somewhat more mature than the many novels focused on the early 20s crowd) finding happiness and true love well after their 30th birthdays.

Caylor, the spirited and spicy academic at the forefront of The Art of Romance is no exception. A thinking, artistic and erudite English Literature professor, Caylor is a needed change from the chicklit heroines so predominant in the Christian and secular fields. No cosmo drinking, pink-shoe-shopping, hapless, assistant in a major marketing or publishing firm is she. No metropolitan existence and urbanite roommates pepper her flashy life. Instead, she lives in a house in the midst of renovation with her darling grandmother and, soon, her sister.

Caylor is in her mid-30s: not slim-perfect, not stylish ( she has moments, especially in a well-picked dress that catches our hero's eye), not petite. In fact, Caylor's height was one of the most outstanding aspects of this statuesque and poised woman. She is learning to be comfortable in her own skin and it shows..... especially to the somewhat-younger Dylan Bradley.

Dylan is the newest addition to the faculty at JRU, the institution where Caylor works. A painter who has not even dipped into his full potential, Dylan is trying to recover from a domineering relationship where he was victim to a possessive mate while establishing himself as a successful art professor.

I found Dylan's past and the reconciliation thereafter a welcome addition to the novel and to the genre. Christian writers rarely delve into relationships past that expose a hero's less-than-pure past in the same honest way Dacus does. Dacus is blunt about Dylan's past travails and eager to paint him a winsome hero despite them.

It works.

Though both have facets of themselves they keep from each other, the chemistry between them is absolute. Especially when it comes to their appreciation of art: written, verbal and visual.

Dacus showed a pleasing knowledge of the work of artists past and did a wonderfully descriptive job of painting ( forgive the pun) Dylan's artistry and his consistent work on new canvas. From the moment Dylan views Caylor as a prospective model and sees her, not as a flawed heroine, but as a woman who catches a certain depth of light, you know that these two are meant to be in each other's company.

There are several pleasing subplots and characters including Dylan's rambunctious and supportive brothers, the elder generation who thrives on matchmaking their grandchildren, Caylor's close girlfriends and Caylor's spunky sister. Overall, this is a very well-fleshed out novel.

I particularly enjoyed the duality of the title and how it means more than you think it does---when it takes a slant at revealing the hidden identity of a popular romance cover model!

Readers of Contemporary Romance and "Chick Lit" will enjoy the pleasant predictability of the plot and the cozy nature of the hero and heroine's burgeoning courtship.

Because of the age of her characters and the struggles they undergo ( due to age difference, maturity, intellect and errors in their past), I think Dacus is a much-needed voice in a sea of novels that favour the experience of much younger women.

If you, like me , have ever felt yourself restraining conversation in male company at a party because you were worried about coming off as too intellectual, then Caylor is the heroine for you. She is not afraid to be herself and her boldness sparks...and attracts... the attention of a man who, in any other novel, might overlook her for someone thinner, more stylish, younger, in less of a threatening position, etc.,etc.,

Overall, a thoughtful and well-told book that favours showing over telling and that delves into two characters whose redemption ultimately comes from their ability to recognize their downfalls and collectively pick themselves up, dust themselves off and head into a far more promising future.

Its conflict and undertones of past mistakes and present judgments give it a "meatier" feel than many of its ilk.

This was a welcome and different type of Contemporary Christian Romance and I hope you pick it up, have fun and find yourself in the refreshingly normal characters!

Courting Miss Amsel by Kim Vogel Sawyer

Courting Miss Amsel was the perfect Easter read to take to my favourite little market/coffeeshop in my hometown for the long weekend. It was definitely a cozy book and wills in the spring with its colourful world and warm-fuzzy feelings. We Christians LOVE our one-room-schoolhouse-marm stories and Ms. Edythe Amsel was the perfect match for the delightful, rambunctious and high spirit litter of children she was supplied with. She had the spunk and innovation of a teacher like Anne’s Miss Stacey ( see Anne of Green Gables) even when pestered by an older, mischevious student ( see Lundy Taylor in Catherine Marshall’s Christy). She met each challenge head on and with a surprisingly independent intelligence all while ironing out wrinkles in her personal life, learning to reconcile her past with her promising future and drawing closer to a God she had never learned to lean on.

Two of Miss Amsel’s favourite students ( and the reader will learn why when they encounter these endearing boys), are the blonde-curled nephews of upstanding workman Joel Townsend: a husky, kind-hearted man who raises his orphaned nephews as if they are his own. There are many touching scenes developing this family dynamic. When Joel sees how deeply and genuinely Edythe cares for his charges and how the sun catches the glistening lines of her well-manicured hair, he falls promptly in love. Circumstances, misunderstandings and timidity keep them both from acknowledging their feelings for one another, though the romance blossoms, slowly, swiftly and gradually with a knowing wink at the reader who is eons ahead: waiting for the clueless lovers to catch up.


One of the most interesting strands of the novel was Edythe’s burgeoning interest in feminine equality: especially pertaining acts forbidding women to own land. At one point, she causes more than bit of a kerfuffle with the town council when she is inspired to take her students to hear the famed Susan Anthony speak. If I have one criticism about the book, it is that this wasn’t pursued more ( however, Edythe’s growing interest and passion is left high and prospective at the end--- and perhaps, someday, Sawyer could think of writing a sequel). I completely related with Joel and his desire to find a mother for his boys in the same way I understood Edythe’s conflicts and crises of faith. This was a solid, engaging read with lots of historical anecdotes and tidbits painting an accurate picture of a young teacher in the latter 19th Century. In my opinion, this is Kim Vogel Sawyer’s strongest offering to date.


My thanks to Bethany House for the review copy

TLC BLOG TOUR: A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz

A Jane Austen Education is one of the most delightful books I have read this year and an essential compendium to any extensive Jane Austen Collection of works and criticism ( such as my own). It extolls all of the virtues of Jane Austen in a way we don’t often view them: as tantamount to the greatest life lessons. Walking us through Jane Austen’s six novels in a literary memoir, noted critic and renowned professor William Deresiewicz breathes fresh life into an author whose works I have read to shreds.

Reading Jane Austen for the first time ( as a bitter modernist with a penchant for coffee and sunglasses, apathy and modernism),Deresiewicz mocked the mundane world of Emma: the seeming non-happenstances that threaded through a novel with no overtly bold statements, no visceral truths at forefront, no gripping plot. But, then the book changed, it ( like the best books of literature we peel back like a leaf) become all-to-clear for our author and informed his life and formative academic years in a way that not only propelled him to sink into Austen’s entire canon; but shifted his world view.

His relationships, his view of love, the way he treated people and the lens through which he viewed literature was reformed and hi-jacked by a growing fascination with Austen: who said the extraordinary and catapulted universal truths into the wide sphere of her readership with the ordinary.

From his crush on Elizabeth Bennett to his learning to love in the same way Catherine Morland learned to love a hyacinth at the urging of Miss Tilney, a Jane Austen Education is an ABSOLUTE MUST for those who love her novels.

You will want to think back on your first reading experience, you will identify with the author’s feelings on one portion of the novel while rally against views on another and you will be forced to contemplate how Jane Austen has subverted herself into your psyche, whether or not you knew she was doing so.

Austen’s place in the cultural consciousness as well as her lasting place in media is another thread of the book.

Favourite moments include:

Deresiewicz referring to the New York Dating Scene as “an endless maze of stupid conversations”

His run-down of the films good and bad

The fact that he tries to gloriously extricate every splendid moment of the novel without spoiling the plot for new readers

His unabashed crush on Elizabeth Bennet and his willingness to defend her from any criticism: warranted or unwarranted

His treatise on novels as “practice life” and his exposition on the life of a reader whose novel reading informs make-up: morally, ethically, in love, reason and decision

His absolute joy in the Ang Lee adaptation of Sense and Sensibility: casting light on a dark plot

Most importantly, his recognition that the power of the best literary novels is one that takes residence in your brain and being and changes your life.



View the guest blog by William Deresiewicz at The Huffington Post

Visit the TLC tour

South Riding started last night on PBS.

Based on a classic 20th Century novel, focusing on the triumphs and travails of a rural community, featuring the splendid Anna Maxwell Martin ( think: Bleak House) and David Morrissey (whose Col Brandon in Sense and Sensibility was, to me, even greater than the great Alan Rickman in the Ang Lee adaptation and who steals scenes left, right and center in Our Mutual Friend and who sings his way opposite David Tennant in the really odd Blackpool and who now plays DI Thorne) the series has the right ingredients to make for a lasting impression and started off with a bang.

Couched in the uncertainty single women underwent after the Great War, South Riding flaunts an experience metaphoric of the shift occurring in traditional women’s roles. Knowing that a large population of young British men had never returned from service and knowing that the obvious role of domestic servitude a la wife and mother was a fleeting prospect, Sarah Burton represents the “other”: the women who recognized that they had to carve a life for themselves outside of marriage and motherhood.

Fortunately, Sarah Burton embraces change and says so with indignation and incendiary purpose when she applies for the position of headmaster at an all-girls’ school in South Riding. The board is pleasantly surprised by her passion and intelligence and her history with their township. For the most part, they believe that the experiences she gained in life and academic pursuit in London will greatly inform the development of the young women in their township. Robert Carne, a once-wealthy but now struggling landowner, believes that she represents the shifting change that has warranted his diminishing circumstances.

The first episode introduces a roster of characters that will serve as the main players in the piece. While concurrently reading the Winifred Holtby novel, the first drastic change I noticed between book and screen is the witling down of the book’s massive cast. Instead, Andrew Davies does what he does best: capture the spirit of the novel and attend to making character traits pervading strongly represented in one or two characters (instead of the novel’s 3 or 4, etc.,).

The political spirit of the novel, the at-odds penchant for passion, change and promise and the stern wills and ethics of both Sarah Burton and Robert Carne help establish the comparison this story often has to George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Other 19th Century literary comparisons can be made to Jane Eyre--- but you will have to watch the series, or read the book, to glean those similarities for yourself.

Overall, a refreshing start-off to a winsome costume drama with lots of heart, feeling, romantic tension and beautifully rendered dialogue penned by one of the BBC’s best writers.

TLC BLOG TOUR: THE PEACH KEEPER

Sarah Addison Allen does it again

Reader, I love this lady’s books! Love them!

I also sort of love her. Just join her facebook page or read her random Sarah Addison Allen facts on her exceptionally amusing website and you will be charmed.

Allen writes for the everywoman. If you speak “girl”, you will LOVE Sarah Addison Allen. She pays attention to the slight magic that silvers every day experiences, she turns fairytales out of the ordinary and she crafts romantic twists, spins and turns that will send your heart thudding. Moreover, her recipe is made of the ingredients of normalcy. She makes you believe that this could happen to you and drives it home with characters, towns and instances painted with utter realism.

If you have a heart, a penchant to believe in the extraordinary and the slightest will to imagine the impossible, then Sarah Addison Allen’s well-defined characters make you believe that something is just waiting for you around a colourful corner--- in the same way it is waiting for them.

You cannot JUST read the Peach Keeper. Buy it and savour it, yes, but know that when you turn the last page that a.) you will go and thumb through the book to re-visit your favourite parts b.) you will immediately want to revisit Sarah Addison Allen Land and will be itching to get your hands on anything else she has written.

If you have read and enjoyed Alice Hoffman, Angela Carter, Fannie Flagg, Billie Letts , Cathy Lamb or Rebecca Wells, you will LOVE Sarah Addison Allen. I argue that she is the best of all because, like the best authors, she allows her personality drip through into every word.

There is something comforting about reading a Sarah Addison Allen book, something that spirits you to a time and place you are nostalgic for ( even if you never lived there), something that folds you in the relaxing aura of home. Care-free and shoes-kicked-off, you’ll sink into her story and not want to leave.

At the center of the Peach Keeper are two remarkable women: former high-school prankster Willa Jackson and socialite Paxton Osgoode. Though their paths have crossed numerous times in the small town of Walls of Water, North Carolina, deeply-hidden family secrets, twists of romance, and the excavation of the dark and disturbing past plaguing the renovation of the Blue Ridge Madam inn bind them together in a way that asserts and exhibits both of their strengths and weaknesses. Though starkly different, Willa and Paxton’s pasts, determination and flaws complement each other remarkably. You will see a little of yourself in each of these heroines ( as you will in all of Addison Allen’s heroines) and you will root for their triumphs and the romance that awaits each in the least likely of places.

This is a marvelous, engaging, curl-up-with-a-cup-of-tea book that will have you sighing for hours after you leave it.

At times painful, romantic, sparkling, mysterious and humourous, you will live for the characters and hope every last thread will be tied into a knot worthy of their happy endings.

Don’t worry---they will be.


Alongside my copy of the Peach Keeper, I received a Yankee Candle---peach flavoured and featuring the book’s delicious cover.

What a treat!

But, the best treat of all was the arrival of a new Sarah Addison Allen--- she’s a book drug if ever there was one

Follow the TLC Blog Tour here:

My sincere thanks to TLC for granting me the privilege of diving into a new Allen book!

So THIS is what Lynn Austin Sounds Like...

Everyone in the world knows that I am a HUGE Lynn Austin fan.

Love her! LOVE HER! love her!

Consider this paragraph from my review of Fire by Night, my favourite of her reams of excellent novels:

I usually look for expert characterization, deftly-woven plot, some humour, some sparkle, some originality: some historical what-have-you in my historicals; some carefully-planted mayhem in my murder mysteries; the books that make me giggle and clap and gasp at their brilliance ( I have said before, I am an effusive reader). Lynn Austin ignites all of these things.

What makes Lynn Austin special to me ( for special she is ) is the fact that her works hit me on a deeper, spiritual level.

This is not mere infatuated emotionalism: the kind I reserve for the books I love, love, love. Austin validates in an erudite and carefully plotted fashion the role and journey of any woman of faith

Reading a Lynn Austin book for me is empowering: spiritually, emotionally, personally.

When her profundities surge through the page I am not just rattled in my usual "La! Such brilliance fashion"; but rattled, rather, to the core.

If I am having an off-kilter moment, if I am grappling at some truth in relation to Christianity if I am feeling, what with all my passionate opinions and strict independence, like I do not fit the mold of the ideal Christian woman ---Lynn Austin makes it okay.

Yah. I love her work. I do! I do! Back when I had twitter ( if you all remember), I started a Lynn Austin #hashtag campaign just before the release of her novels. Good times. Very few people subscribed; but I persevered.

Annnnyways.... I discovered this interview with Bethany House today. Why this elates me? If I have read an author's voice for so long, I am always interested to hear what they sound like. I got to hear Ms. Austin's voice for the first time as she elaborates on the writing process, speaks to the moving Though Waters Roar, takes us through the development of While We're Far Apart and even hints at the book publishing in October. Listen to this!

What stood out for me?

Her discussions on:

Characters taking lives on their own

-The strange and providential intervention that kick-started her career

-The challenges of writing during the distraction of real life.

-Her belief that the intended message will get across without preaching to it in a blatant way.

-A bulletin board of templates

-Finding her interconnected themes ( which are always poignant, potent and moving) after writing large chunks of the novel.

I hope you enjoy as much as I did!

HAPPY EASTER !

“Easter Our imitation of God in this life -- that is, our willed imitation, as distinct from any likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or our states -- must be an imitation of God Incarnate. Our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the divine life operating under human conditions.” --C.S. Lewis

Christianity is a power religion. Christ has the power to re-create men from the inside out, as every man who has ever met Him knows. --Peter Marshall

“Continuing a short series of verse on Christ: Hard it is, very hard, To travel up the slow and stony road To Calvary, to redeem mankind; far better To make but one resplendent miracle, Lean through the cloud, lift the right hand of power And with a sudden lightning smite the world perfect. Yet this was not God's way, Who had the power, But set it by, choosing the cross, the thorn, The sorrowful wounds. Something there is, perhaps, That power destroys in passing, something supreme, To whose great value in the eyes of God That cross, that thorn, and those five wounds bear witness.” --Dorothy L. Sayers

Long my Imprisoned spirit lay,

fast bound in sin and nature's night;

thine eye diffused a quickening ray;

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

my chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed thee"

--Charles Wesley

A Heart Most Worthy by Siri Mitchell

First off, I want to thank Ruth for sending this my way! Thank you, Ruth!

Next to Lynn Austin, Siri Mitchell is my favourite Christian writer in the historical genre and she gives us another strong offering in a series that focuses on fashion through the ages.

Here, the fashion theme is blatant: the story follows three young Italian seamstresses working for the formidable Mme. Fortier in 1917 Boston. The outside world is fraught with conflict: immigrants, anarchists, the Spanish Influenza, the American involvement in the Great War. Near home, Annamaria, Julietta and Luciana discover life and love in a delightful coming-of-age tale told in the style reminiscent of Montgomery or Alcott.

I should speak a little more to the narrative style. As proven in A Constant Heart and Love's Pursuit, Mitchell enjoys playing with narrative perspective in voice. In the glorious, INSPYs-winning, She Walks in Beauty ( which I certainly enjoyed reviewing and commenting on as a judge in the historical category ), it is ephemera: in society columns and newspaper clippings that informs Mitchell's unique narration.

I must admit that the voice in A Heart Most Worthy was grating on me at times: especially with consistent asides to the reader and with the same word ending a perspective and being used, in a slightly different context, to begin the next narrative point of view. However, I got used to it very quickly and it did not detract at all from my enjoyment of the story and its meticulous historical research. In fact, I am impressed by Mitchell's constant dedication to reinventing her story-telling technique. In a genre and market-place steeped in same-old, same-old tradition, it is nice that someone takes risk.

While Mitchell's narrative voice informs of many character triumphs and failings, it is still up to the reader to judge on their own while watching the action unfold.

There is plenty of action: from an assassinated count's daughter to a Romeo and Juliet love story between a young seamstress and the Sicilian grocer across the road to a passionate woman who skips confession to meet a sinister young man in questionable situations.

Mitchell handles the historical aspects, as always, with great fervour and respect and weaves them seamlessly into her tale. Moreover, she is true to the Catholic faith and tradition as it would have been the most prominent and lasting religion in the Italian Immigrant world. She is able to pursue great themes of faith and God's redemptive power in a religion not often at the forefront of evangelical Christian fiction ( Austin did this quite well with the Jewish faith in While We're Far Apart).

Perhaps my favourite thread in the story ( something I share with Books, Movies and Chinese Food's amazon review) is the developing love between Annamaria and the sweet grocer, Rafaello. In tradition, Annamaria, as eldest daughter, is expected to remain single, childless and devout to her family. When she meets the forbidden Sicilian grocer's son and begins a sweet, often wordless communication, she realizes that all of the dreams she has harboured guiltily for so long must become reality. She finds a voice, a backbone and the courage to attend to her own desires. Rafaello's devotion to her family, his enemies, is a great act of love (putting one in mind of the great sacrifice made in Love's Pursuit).

As per usual, I was delighted to have a new Siri Mitchell in my hands and I identified with aspects of each of the strong, different and equally amazing women and their plights in self-discovery and love.

Because I am such a massive Lynn Austin fan and because Austin excels at weaving multiple story and character lines within periods of history ( especially exploring a woman's place in a domestic sphere and in the greater sphere of historical significance), more than once my mind tried to conceptualize how she would deal with this experience were the plot submitted to her hand.

A great read and one I am sure will be seen on the INSPYs shortlist again.

Dear George Clooney, Please Marry my Mom by Susin Nielsen

Dear George Clooney: Please Marry My Mom by Susin Nielsen is a delightful middle-grade novel featuring a wonderfully spunky heroine. Recalling Judy Blume and Harriet-the-Spy, this coming-of-age tale is set in soggy Vancouver. A heroine whose mood and resoluteness is as steady as the steely-rain weather, Violet will steal your heart. Violet speaks right to us as she recalls the events that led to her director father leaving with the blonde bimbo star of a failed tv show. With their father living in Los Angeles with said blonde bimbo, Violet, her sister and her mother are left in a dilapidated house, scraping pennies and trying to get by. What’s worse, Violet’s mother insists on compulsive dating and when she sets her sights on the unfortunately named Dudley Weiner, Violet springs into action.


Divorce stories are nothing new in middle-grade fiction; but this one was teeming with realism. Violet’s embarrassment, awkwardness and roller-coaster emotions clearly established the author’s validity. I felt what Violet felt and even at her most mischievous, she was endearing. Rather like Harriet the Spy ( and at times with similar antics), Violet has the ability to be synonymously charming and prickly. When Violet decides that George Clooney is the only man for her mom and begins writing him deliciously detailed letters, the plot really springs into action. These letters alone make the novel worth reading. Nielsen has perfectly captured the pre-teen voice. Violet’s first crush, aversion to affection, desperation to avenge her mother’s honour and take vengeance on her father’s actions were vital, lucid and real. I was stunned by how well the author possessed the thoughts and psyche of a typical 7th grader. This offering from Tundra has received critical acclaim. In fact, it was that acclaim that led me to pick it up in the first place. I am glad I did.

Mildred Pierce Review

I started watching Mildred Pierce on HBO a few weeks ago and only finished it last evening. It is a long and gruesome production, ticking solemnly by-- very much as I imagine the dirty thirties did--- with nowhere to go and little money to spend things on ( to paraphrase Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird). Adapted from the James Cain novel--- which I vaguely remember reading in the insurmountable pile of books I read in high school and uni. ---it focuses on an ambitious woman in an unambitious time.

Mildred is a talented cook with a resolute spirit and more than a healthy dose of pride ( which is almost interpreted as snobbery in certain situations). When she learns her husband is having an affair, she kicks him out and falls prey as the victim of unpaid scandal. Not so long ago, no, but still in the age where women separated from their husbands had little chance at livelihood--- less of a chance during a country-wide depression.

Mildred scrapes by to raise her two daughters: the more formidable being the ghastly Veda, a snake-like red-head who is always ashamed of her mother, her circumstances and holds a general disdain for anything in her path. Veda's somewhat of a musical prodigy and Mildred worships her as a younger version of herself and does everything she can to ensure her happiness and opportunity.

A chance job as a waitress brings out Mildred's entrepreneurial side and soon Mildred is selling pies, opening chicken and waffle restaurants and carving a name and future for herself.

Veda is becoming more and more abhorrent and nothing that her resourceful and smart mother does is nearly good enough.

Mildred is a sensual and smart woman and has a few relationships that seem questionable in the still guarded and moral society of 1930s America. The most notable of these is with a dashing, be-moustached Monty: who can only afford to keep electricity in one wing of his sadly dust-gathered mansion. Mildred also retains a passable relationship with her first husband and with a friend and financial advisor named Wally.

As Veda grows older, Mildred, too, becomes prey to her daughter's vicious and manipulative personality. Coiled in her own pride and love and blinded by her insistence that Veda is just a stern and ambitious woman like herself, Mildred fails to see what the audience and nearly every other character in the miniseries does: that the central tragedy of the tale his Mildred's steadfast love for her daughter.

An almost surreal confrontation between Mildred and Veda is backed by a playfully eerie piano tune: weaving a carousel of melody that brings to light the almost vaudeville-esque antics of Veda and her puppetry of all around her: from her mother to Monty, the almost-step father she always held a disturbing attachment to.

What perhaps is most interesting about the film is how the camera lens shows but part of the unravelling of each scene. We are kept in periphery: never seeing the full picture. You'll catch glimpses of characters through slices of open windows, in the reflection of a doorframe they pass by, behind a passing car.... you are an established outsider, looking into this strange and well-formulated world.

As Veda's musicality progresses and upon discovery of her ultra talent as a bonafide coloratura, so does music play into the grand opus of the tale. I enjoyed the musical selection and thought Evan Rachel Wood did a passable job at lip synching the words from the beautiful voice cast as her double. The well-known standard, "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows", becomes a potent theme song for the eponymous character and her stumbles and strifes through 1930s California.

The locations were beautifully scouted and expertly filmed. The interiors were meticulously detailed and everything seemed a perfect recreation of the past. The costume changes were extensive (especially for Winslet and for the dozens and dozens of extras) and I fell in love with a vintage style that seems to be creeping back into our modern world.

As mentioned, this is a very moderately-paced miniseries (this from the girl who loves Dickens and Masterpiece Theatre) and is very tame for HBO. Perhaps the melodrama, iniquity, passion and blood we expect from this broadcasting corporation, is riddled in the character's ulterior motives and the underlying feelings and thoughts we are but given a small glimpse into.

The darker side, the inhuman and savage side, is most clearly seen in Veda: a heartless creature who will stop at nothing to rip out her mother's heart.

I have not see the Joan Crawford adaptation in years; but can well say that this decides not to play up on the noir aspects its predecessor did. Instead, this Mildred Pierce strips the less-obvious yet still telling and poignant struggles and circumstances, nuances and dialogue from its source material, crafting a solid, if slow, evaluation on the highs and lows of parental relationships amidst quelled ambition.

BOOKS in the NEWS!

• Michael Crummey
• Henning Mankell
• Anthony Horowitz reads from the House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes novel
• Sarah Addison Allen's charming ode to the spell of books
• Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo, faces digital reckoning
• obsessed "Windies" pay homage to their favourite novel with a trip to Atlanta
• the Quill and Quire discusses the role publishing plays at the polls in the upcoming Canadian election ( especially in light of tonight's televised debates)
• My favourite Book of the Bible is filmed (starring 80s and 90s contemporary Christian music video star, Carman, as Boaz)
• can it be worse than the technicolour 1960s treatment?
• More people that recognize Kate Griffin's ( it's really Catherine Webb: she of the 'Horatio Lyle' novels ) brilliance
• Have you friended a fictional facebook friend yet? Try Melrose Plant or Sydney Carton

why women love Mr. Rochester

I was fortunate enough to do a guest post at Booktalk and More about WHY WE LOVE MR. ROCHESTER ( because we do).....This is part of Ruth's All Things Jane series which is super awesome.

GO READ IT!

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

Clorkwork Angel by Cassandra Clare was majorly on sale at the airport on Sunday as I embarked on another work trip. I thought I would pick it up to read on the plane. Confession: I immediately loved the cover of the novel and had read all about the appearance of another addition to the popular Steampunk genre.


Orphaned Tessa Gray is desolate when her aunt dies knowing that the meager life she led is a comparative solace to the loneliness of being all alone as a young Victorian woman. When her brother sends for her, including a steamer ship passage to London with his telegram, Tessa embarks on a journey across the ocean to the vast, dirty and mystical world of London. Things take a nasty turn when she is kidnapped by the Dark Sisters and made to practice and hone her, until now unknown, shape-shifting ability to help them plan their own infernal purposes. A chance encounter with a dapper young hero named Will transplants her to the world of the Shadowhunters: a community strongly linked with the supernatural. Demons, vampires, goblins and other creatures of the night now populate her world and as Tessa draws closer to this esoteric community and becomes more and more attached to Will and his gleaming, fragile best friend Jem, Tessa learns that she and her brother are part of a much larger mechanism propelling the city from underneath.




A dark, sinister and enchanting tale of human device stripped of soul ( sometimes literally), Clockwork Angel is an engaging, rapid-fast addition to the urban fantasy genre. I really liked Clare’s London: vaguely painted and outlined so that the reader can import their own ideas and colour in the lines. I also enjoyed the peripheral characters and was impressed at how well Clare developed them. It is quite obvious she knows her “World” like the back of her hand and all of the players within it. Finally, the erudite quotes that well-represent each chapter, and flashed at their headings, and the informed way she inserts literary references and Tessa’s affinity to books that feel like home to her, was welcome. Perhaps most welcome was Clare’s understanding of the publishing world of the era. She didn’t slip up once at knowing what would be available and by whom. I was pleasantly surprised. She shows great knowledge and depth in her writing for teens. There is, of course, a love triangle and it will be interesting to see how fellow readers make their choice for which of the dazzling heroes and why. I am very sternly set on my “pick” and would love to discuss if anyone wants to throw their two cents in.


I will definitely read more of this fun and smartly dark series and hope that Clare publishes the next installment shortly. Tessa becomes stronger and more willful as the story progresses and teenage girls should find plenty to admire in her ( more than they would ever find in that stupid, white-faced, fall-over-at-the-drop-of-a-dime- Bella Swan). A smarter offering in this genre --- Readers who enjoy the love triangle of Twilight will find a vastly superior plot and character vehicle here and those pining for the resurrection of the Hunger Games will enjoy its spirited kick-ass heroine and the boys who pine for her. Good Times.

The Nurse's Social Media Advantage by Robert Fraser

...And now for Something Completely Different.... If I know you and you write a book, I will write about your book on this here blog. I happen to know a guy who wrote a book. It's about nurses and the fortitude of social engagement, media and promotion to instill a sense of community and outreach while inspiring ideas, collaboration and community. Yes, this book may sound a tad esoteric for those of us out of his field; but for those in Robert Fraser's field, he is quite the thing.... Widely published and well-respected in the field of Nursing in Toronto and beyond, Fraser has optimized social media to engage in the subject most passionate to him and to his extensive academic study. From podcasts to innovative teaching, collaboration and research ( see Fraser's impressive background here), Fraser is utilizing the most creative outlets to speak to professionals in his field and beyond. ->Present and near-past events have presented with certainty the vital and groundbreaking platform Social Media can become when needed to propel and purport ideas into action. For those interested in how Social Media can be used in a myriad of areas--- including Nursing and Health Care, then Robert Fraser's new book is the prime option to start. You can purchase The Nurse's Social Media Advantage on amazon and read more about Fraser and his area of study on his website. Follow Rob on twitter and read his erudite and cited blog. well-played, Robert Fraser!

I love people who claim a vital space for themselves through research and perserverance

Advanced Screening of Jane Eyre? YES PLEASE

From Eye Weekly ""Their tonal differences amount to a perfectly realized chemistry, rendering one of the most tragic literary love stories indelible and, though appropriately chaste, viscerally hot."

I was thrilled to attend an advanced screening of Jane Eyre last night in Toronto and I am even more thrilled to express that I genuinely respected the new adaptation.

The last Jane Eyre we have is (my personal favourite) the 4 hour BBC 2006 version with Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson. If this is the last Jane Eyre you have seen and considering that the director mentioned that his preferred cut was 3.5 hours in length, you can do nought but acknowledge the story’s brevity.

It is framed by Jane’s arrival at St. John Rivers’ house, traces back to her childhood at Mrs. Reed’s and Lowood and progresses forward to the pivotal year at Thornfield.

We have a quiet, somewhat abrupt and languid Jane Eyre that heavily plays up on its gothic sense. Things go bump in the night, shadows dance on the actor’s faces and Thornfield is an elegant maze of strange, curtained drawing rooms and creaky nooks and paths.

This element helps make this adaptation the most accessible I have seen for those uninitiated. It is craftily filmed and draws on the same use of colour lightening last year’s stunning Bright Star.

Judi Dench plays a venerable Mrs. Fairfax and Jamie Bell does what he can with the thankless role of St. John Rivers.

Mia Wasikowska is a challenging, pure, resolute and straightforward Jane whose iron will is displayed in beautifully rendered scenes when her moral fibre is challenged.

Rochester, of course, is the make-or-break of any Jane Eyre adaptation ( from the disturbing Orson Welles through the nonchalant William Hurt to the barking Ciaran Hinds who yelled his way through his relationship with Samantha Morton to the wholly miscast Timothy Dalton). Michael Fassbender is cognizant that he is playing into the putty of the Byronic ideal and that this character has been defined, often by playing up its aggressive and violent elements, countless times before. This recognition forces him to play with his eyes. Watch his physiognomy as he livens to Jane’s quick responses and his desperation to penetrate her every thought.


The best scene in the film is the scene after the house fire when Jane and Rochester stand in his half-lit chamber. They did this remarkably well and there is a palpable tension.

The dialogue is stripped directly from the novel and the language is delicious and well executed. My main concern comes with the witling of staple plot points like Grace Poole. They evade the Gypsy scene altogether (don’t blame them. That is a tough one).

When the major conflict arises it does so powerfully and yet in a straightforward manner. Jane’s resolution following it is magnificent to behold.


Those who love their Jane drawn out, languid and lovely might be off-set by the abrupt ending and the quick advancement of Rochester and Jane’s relationship. But, this is a condensed version which certainly captures the spirit and essence of the tale in snippets: in scenery, character and feel.


I really enjoyed this interpretation and, like the best stories that you have internalized, that have coloured your psyche and informed your world view, your sense of ownership seems precariously threatened by the unraveling of it in a different medium. Fortunately, Jane Eyre hits the right notes, offers something fresh and inventive and exposes the great, mind-blowing romanticism that has kept it at the forefront of the Western Canon since 1847.

note: fellow Torontonians, Jane Eyre is playing EXCLUSIVELY at the Varsity ( where I saw it last night), so, you know how fast this theatre sells out.... buy tickets early :-)

Jane. .... all sorts of Jane

I am so excited to see the new Jane Eyre this weekend. I have read that book to shreds since my first reading at 14 years old!

Looking for some Jane Eyre love? Look no further:

-Michael Fassbender prefers Toby Stephens' Rochester to all others ( no surprise, I do too)
-Which is the creepiest Rochester and which version has no creep factor at all? Slate.com tells us
-Leah McLaren ( possibly Canada's worst columnist) adds her two cents. I only add her for balance
-Ghosts of Rochester's Past: from BBC America
-the new film prompts re-reading ( actually, for most of us, we don't need a film to want to re-read... but what the hay!)
-Jane Eyre: heroine extraordinaire
- I loved this review from "Elle"


Keep up with everything Jane Eyre with Bronte Blog: these gals are ALL over the new adaptation!


Is it just me, or does everyone feel sunshiney when 19th Century literature takes over the news?

"' Cause in Vienna... we were poetry..."

Everyone in the world knows that I am obsessed with Vienna. It is my dream city: a frothy, baroque sphere of ornate fairytale. Tall spires, lush, ornamented buildings, hundreds of gardens sprawling between wrought iron gates, music and cobblestones.

Pastries and ice cream at every corner, fountains reaching the sky, harsh accents and the lyrical cadence of a city separated by rings… a sort of perpetual merry-go-round waltz.

Yes, I am obsessed.

I lived in Vienna imaginatively and mentally and spiritually for years ( since I was 11). When I finally visited last summer and all of its shiny, musical splendour kept me exploring and peeking past every walled gate, palace and crevice, I realized that ( in ironic wonderfulness) it had exceeded my expectations.

It’s a city I am aching to return to.

Every time I hear Mozart’s Konzert fur Flote, Harfe und Orchester, I am back in the Goldener Soll at the Musikverein, watching as men and women dressed to the nines splay their music affront glistening stands.

Every time I hear the espresso machine at Starbucks, I am back drinking weiner mélange at the Mozart Café in the Albertinaplatz ( I swear I tried at least 20 different coffees in Wien!)

I want to share these experiences with everyone and relive them in wonderful books.
So, I give you, a list of books that will take you to Vienna:


Vienna Requiem J. Sydney Jones

Vienna Blood Frank Tallis

A Death in Vienna Daniel Silva

The Seven Per Cent Solution Nicholas Meyer (Sherlock and Watson visit Sigmund Freud)

Vienna Prelude Bodie Thoene ( the novel that sparked my passion for the city at age 11)

The Morning Gift Eva Ibbotson ( a Viennese-born writer)

The World According to Garp John Irving (set partially in Vienna)

The Radetsky March Joseph Roth

Read more about John Irving’s passion for the city here.

What’s your favourite city ? What city would you most like to visit? Have you found books that immediately transport you there?

The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels takes us through the meeting, courtship and marriage of popular “Pioneer Woman” blogger Ree Drummond. I must confess I had never heard of Ree Drummond or her blog previously; but when I saw this book mentioned on Harper Collins’ website, I thought it sounded fun.

Ree has this fabulous way of turning her life story into a spicy Harlequinesque mirror of passion and persistence. Her (then ) suitor and (now )husband whom she calls “Marlboro Man” is a perfect gentleman bred of his family’s Oklahoma cattle ranch. I immediately fell into Ree’s world. Having recently returned from a life of vegetarian cuisine and killer designer jeans in LA, Ree takes a sojourn at her childhood home while planning to move to Chicago to kick-start a career in law. While home, she goes to a bar with some girlfriends and sees the salt-and-pepper-haired Marlboro Man from afar. She boldly approaches him and feels an instant chemistry.

Then, she doesn’t hear from him. For months. Life goes on and Ree solidifies her plans to move to Illinois. But, just as everything clicks into place, Marlboro Man calls and they begin a passionate and incendiary relationship that pulls her from her life of sushi and heels to the red-meated BBQ world of the farm. Here, she learns the ins-and-outs of Marlboro Man’s cattle ranch ( and gives a portrait in fine-tuned, blatant humour), spends hours curled on his couch eating steak and watching action films and falls head over heels in love.

To tell the truth, every female reader who has ever had a penchant for a man clad in levi’s and cowboy boots with a rough-hewed grace will also fall madly in love. Think Josh Lucas in the Reese Witherspoon vehicle, Sweet Home Alabama. What makes the narrative so fascinating is Ree’s complete ownership of her fairytale. She strongly believes she has lived a romance out of a movie and she propels it into colour for you so you, too, will begin the realization of dreams in “real life.” Moreover, she is completely and unabashedly self-deprecating. As sure as she knows that she is colouring you one slant of her dreamy, passionate existence, so she reels you into a world of embarrassing flop sweats, insecurities, and mid-honeymoon vomiting. I enjoyed Ree’s candor and spice for life. As someone who tends to romanticize everything with a graceful sweep of rose-coloured glasses from outstretched hand to brink of nose, I completely understand her willingness to paint her love affair with cinematic scope.This book is delightfully refreshing and focuses on the tender and humorous moments of a great, true-to-life romance.

Any gal who has long given up on finding a cowboy outside of a Paul Newman flick will find it wonderfully exhilarating to read about a normal gal who just happened to lasso a happiness completely removed from the blinders of her poised-and-ready ambition. Moreover, Ree’s story continues on her blog: where you read beyond the courtship and honeymoon to the trials, triumphs and travails of her current role as mother and homeschooler of four children. Ree never sleeps in again.

Ree lives zillions of miles away from Starbucks ( I don’t care what kind of cowboy you are, there are some sacrifices I could never make), Ree gives up fancy heels and fashion design and vegetarianism. Ree is never a size 6 ( her wedding dress) again. Ree has never been happier. What an empowering look and defense at a marriage gone right.

Why pan the shelves of your bookstore for the newest fictional chicklit, when you can easily grab the real thing.

SCOTT LYNCH!

Since the exciting news of A Dance with Dragons was released and readers itching for the latest George R R Martin feel that their 6 years of book purgatory is over, I thought I would express my similar enthusiasm at the prospective publication date by the latest of a favourite author.

Dear Scott Lynch,

You have no idea how much your books fill my heart and head with glee. No idea.

I LOVE the Lies of Locke Lamora and I LOVE Red Seas Under Red Skies and I think you have a cuttingly winsome sense of humour and a fully-developed magical realm and characters so dimensional you need 3D glasses just to scope them in their tantalizing complexity.

Moreover, you perfectly render the blood and passion and intrigue of a land filled with the periphery of war. As sweet as your prose is, you can turn over a dark leaf and unleash a depth of terror and suspense rarely found in your genre.

I cannot stop talking about the Lies of Locke Lamora. So much so, I think some people buy it just to shut me up ( but then they read and love it ).


The problem is, Scott Lynch, that I JUST CANNOT WAIT for the Republic of Thieves. I can’t. I’ve tried. I’m like one of those mopey George RR Martin fans who, to no avail, refreshes their browser so that the unnamed release date appears Banquo-like in the background.


I cannot wait. I can’t. My fingertips are twitching.

You left us in a rather perplexing place. The fates of Jean Tannen and glorious Locke hang heavily in the air. I am so excited.


Scott Lynch, you are a magnificent wordsmith and you paint a canvas that I cannot wait to jump into again.

I want to return to your kaleidoscope-coloured world and read your gritty, visceral dialogue and have the ends of my eyelids stand on end in scintillating, book-drunk glee.


I have had it on pre-order for ages and everytime I get a note from amazon informing me that the date has changed; something within my reader’s heart shrivels and dies. I know there's not a lot you can do about this and Orion has confirmed November. I just wanted to let you know that as excited as readers are about the Martin, so this reader is excited about the return of her beloved Locke....


Cordially,
Rachel

TLC Blog Tour: the Oracle of Stamboul

The universe seems to be against my blog tour stop for the Oracle of Stamboul.

First, I just received my review copy (as arranged by the lovely folks at TLC) because it was somehow stuck at the post office awaiting me. Secondly, blogger was down yesterday when I tried throwing this up over lunch at work and then last night, the power was out in my neighbourhood.

It’s not faring well for this here blog…. However, the book is SO gorgeously scintillating, I hope that you will forgive tardiness and replace it with anticipation similar to what I am feeling at finally reviewing this book in detail.

Please note that when I DO have a chance to delve further into the novel, you can check back here for my thoughts.

If the haunting and mellow cover is not enough to draw rapt attention from you, then I direct you to the publisher’s description:

“Set in the heart of the exotic Ottoman Empire during the first years of its chaotic decline, Michael David Lukas’ elegantly crafted, utterly enchanting debut novel follows a gifted young girl who dares to charm a sultan—and change the course of history, for the empire and the world. An enthralling literary adventure, perfect for readers entranced by the mixture of historical fiction and magical realism in Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, or Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Lukas’ evocative tale of prophesy, intrigue, and courage unfolds with the subtlety of a Turkish mosaic and the powerful majesty of an epic for the ages."

Magical Realism. A favourite genre for those lemony evenings that melt winter into spring. I don’t know about you; but any novel that draws comparison from a myriad of modern classics ( such as Marquez, Pamuk and Pullman) deserves a peek.

Harper Collins allows you to delve a little further into Michael David Lukas’ biography, inspiration and even his favourite books here.

Browse and buy the book here.

Make sure you visit Michael David Lukas’ website where you can find links to several of Lukas’ previous writing.


Please continue to follow the book tour ( even if I am a let-down!)

March 1:Unabridged Chick

March 2: Simply Stacie

March 3: Janet Boyer Blog