20/50 2015 reads.

Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick.  I found Chadwick when I worked in a library my first job out of high school.  Her books were an instant hit with me, and since I don't read them often, they are constant, reliable good reads that I always enjoy.  From goodreads:
Matilda, daughter of Henry I, knows that there are those who will not accept her as England's queen when her father dies. But the men who support her rival Stephen do not know the iron will that drives her.

Adeliza, Henry's widowed queen and Matilda's stepmother, is now married to a warrior who fights to keep Matilda off the throne. But Adeliza, born with a strength that can sustain her through heartrending pain, knows that the crown belongs to a woman this time.

This doesn't really do it justice, as its very...short, and Chadwick is known for her lengthy and detailed descriptions and most of her books span the lifetime of most of her characters.  Matilda "officially" becomes queen based on English inheritance laws after her father King Henry dies in the 12th century.  Although many are loyal to their first female leader, many are not, and Matilda spends her life trying to re-obtain her crown, first for herself, and then for her sons.  


The Dinner by Herman Koch.   From goodreads...
A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the delicate scraping of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of politeness - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But the empty words hide a terrible conflict and, with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened... Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. Together, the boys have committed a horrifying act, caught on camera, and their grainy images have been beamed into living rooms across the nation; despite a police manhunt, the boys remain unidentified - by everyone except their parents. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children and, as civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.  

This book was good, I think, although not because of a stellar plot line.   The organization of the book, coinciding with the menu course they are concurrently eating, is fun and different, and it has an unreliable narrator, which isn't revealed until the end.   I think the writing is a bit choppy, but that could be due to a poor translation, as I believe it was written originally in Dutch.  

The Awakening by Kate Chopin.  Description from goodreads...
First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening has been hailed as an early vision of woman's emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman's abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her awakening to desires and passions that threaten to consume her. Originally entitled A Solitary Soul, this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction, rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman engaged in self-discovery turns away from convention and society and toward the primal, from convention and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly attracted to nature and the senses. The Awakening, Kate Chopin's last novel, has been praised by Edmund Wilson as "beautifully written." And Willa Cather described its style as "exquisite," "sensitive," and "iridescent."  

I picked this off my classics list and enjoyed it, in parts.  Kind of a parlor book; people of any age, in any time period, will fall out of love with their spouse and into love with someone new.

Girl on the train by Paula Hawkins

This might be my favorite of the 5...unreliable narrators, at least as a reader it seems its hard to know who to trust, multiple viewpoints, spotty memory recollections, and taking people watching a bit too far.  It's set in England, and is well written, a fast read, and really interesting.   From goodreads...
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

A compulsively readable, emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller that draws comparisons to Gone Girl, The Silent Wife, or Before I Go to Sleep, this is an electrifying debut embraced by readers across markets and categories.

My sister nailed me her copy with a note to "read immediately."  

At water's edge by Sarah Gruen.
I heard about this book from a book club I was supposed to attend but couldn't because of work.  I read the book anyway and loved it.  I was excited to read it for two reasons;  Sarah Gruen also wrote Water for Elephants which I loved, & the locale in the book is Loch Ness, which I have a soft spot for. I thought Maddie was a bit of whiny brat at first, but comes into her own in a Scottish inn after she realizes her husband is a good-for-nothing cad.  It's a less obvious and predictable, and more real journey of self-discovery.  From goodreads...

In her stunning new novel, Gruen returns to the kind of storytelling she excelled at in Water for Elephants: a historical timeframe in an unusual setting with a moving love story. Think Scottish Downton Abbey.

After embarrassing themselves at the social event of the year in high society Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve of 1942, Maddie and Ellis Hyde are cut off financially by Ellis’s father, a former army Colonel who is already embarrassed by his son’s inability to serve in WWII due to his being colorblind. To Maddie’s horror, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father’s favor is to succeed in a venture his father attempted and very publicly failed at: he will hunt the famous Loch Ness monster and when he finds it he will restore his father’s name and return to his father’s good graces (and pocketbook). Joined by their friend Hank, a wealthy socialite, the three make their way to Scotland in the midst of war. Each day the two men go off to hunt the monster, while another monster, Hitler, is devastating Europe. And Maddie, now alone in a foreign country, must begin to figure out who she is and what she wants. The novel tells of Maddie’s social awakening: to the harsh realities of life, to the beauties of nature, to a connection with forces larger than herself, to female friendship, and finally, to love.



  

 

Jane Austen Marriage Manual by Kim Izzo

Jane Austen Marriage Manual might make Jane Austen roll over in her grave. 
I received this book as a gift, but I liked the idea of it and eagerly started reading it.  It started off well enough; Kate is a freelance magazine writer, approaching forty, single, and living at home.  In a very short time span, she loses her job, the family home, and her beloved grandmother.  A lifelong Austen fan, Kate decides to make some cash writing an article about how Austen's marriage advice is still applicable in modern society.  The story drastically shifts when Kate decides to actually live it, and starts pursuing rich men to marry.
Her friends, Brandon and Marianne (Sense & Sensibility anyone?), purchase her a tiny plot of land in Scotland as part of a conservation project (what??), and thereby the plan unfolds to pass Kate off as a wealthy landowner of Scottish descent who was born and raised in New York.  To start, she travels to Florida to pursue the wealthy polo set, and befriends Fawn, a recent divorcee.  Together they meet some men, who are rich and single and therefore eligible for Kate to marry.  She returns to NY, then flits off to Switzerland (thanks to wealthy Fawn), and finally to London.  Along the way, she steals a wealthy investment banker, Scott, from his very young Slovenian girlfriend, and the two finally get engaged.

Despite Kate's insistence that she's a big Austen fan, (and carries around a dog-eared copy of Pride & Prejudice as proof), she fails to grasp the concept that Austen's heroine's may pursue a wealthy husband, but they marry for LOVE, not for money (Mr. Darcy, Mr. Knightly, Mr. Bingley, Colonel Brandon). 

As Kate starts pursuing these men, she becomes a very dis-likable, self-absorbed, rather vile person who cares about no one other than herself.  Even knowing her motivations for doing it, (get the family home back, pay back her mothers gambling debts, etc), it still doesn't excuse her behavior. 

I won't read this again, and will probably donate my copy.  I think Izzo needs to re-read her Austen!

We were liars by E. Lockhart

I read Gone Girl a while back and loved it.  I knew really nothing about it and loved the suspense and intrigue of it; I couldn't put it down.
I found We were Liars on a book list titled something like "If you liked Gone Girl, you might like..."  I downloaded on my Kindle and read it a few weeks later.
Since I was expecting the suspense! intrigue!  mystery! I had high expectations of this book.
It didn't quite deliver.  I read with so much anticipation of being shocked, that it diminished the actual shock value.
Cady (Cadence) is the oldest grandchild of a wealthy New England family that summers on the same idyllic beach island that they own.  One summer, Cady wakes up on a beach with a head injury and no memory of what happened. Her besties, Gat, Mirren, and Johnny are vague and don't have contact with her for the next two years until Cady returns to the beach.  Although her injuries cannot be medically explained, Cady is left with debilitating headaches, fails out of high school, drops sports, hobbies, and essentially falls off the life grid. 
Eventually the mystery is explained.  I didn't quite see it happening, so that was a welcome surprise, but I also didn't quite buy the story.  It is a good book, worth the read and its a very quick read, I just should have read it with lesser expectations.

Chasing Shakespeares by Sarah Smith.

 I was introduced to the concept (conspiracy theory) that William Shakespeare may not have have written any or all (depending on the theory) of the works attributed to him in a book called Interred with their bones. I LOVE the book, read it a few years ago and still think about it. Ironically, the sequel was God awful and I couldn’t even finish it. Many people, usually called “Oxfordians” believe the actual author was the Earl of Oxford. Either way, Chasing Shakespeares compounds upon this notion that Shakespeare may not be the glover’s son from Stratford who was an essential nobody, wrote the greatest things ever produced in the English language, and then died.

Chasing Shakespeares follows Joe, his friend Mary Cat who leaves graduate school to pursue the convent, and Joe’s new friend Posy, a very wealthy Harvard student, who are all obsessed with Shakespeare.  Joe was given free reign over the (fictional) Kellogg collection, which is a collection of Shakespearian things collected over a lifetime by a Shakespeare horder. In it, he finds a letter he thinks is authentic, leading credence to the theory that Shakespeare was actually Edward de Vere, a little known noble connected to the Earl of Oxford. Posy and Joe go to London to pursue leads and get the letter authenticated.
The ending was surprising; it was startlingly vague. I read the afterward in which the author stated she wanted the book to be less about finding out who Shakespeare was and more about pursuing the imagination of researchers. Joe and Posy are grad students, who imagine a different way of thinking and pursue their thoughts relentlessly.  It worked for the book. My single legit complaint was that the author is female (Sarah Smith), and does not write men well. At all. Until it was specifically addressed, I thought Joe was female.
Otherwise, I’m always up for a good literary book about literary things.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See:

This book was really popular a few years ago, but the description on the back never seemed interesting to me so I never read it despite the hype.  A few weeks ago Lovey and I were perusing a used book store and I saw it.  Not only was it cheap, it was also 50% off.  I read this book in 24 hours; the old adage of not judging a book by its cover definitely stands true with this book.  Old world China is really interesting to me, despite the mess that modern China has become.  Not women friendly and life was brutal, but the Chinese culture was so unique.  I guess as the world's oldest continuous civilization, unique facets would emerge to keep it going. 
This book follows the story of Lily and Snow Flower; two young Chinese girls living in separate small villages.  They are linked by a matchmaker to become 'same olds,' which doesn't have a good translation, but its like life-long best friends that sign a contract as children.  Lily moves up in the world, financially, through the arrange, but Lily also has perfect feet for binding that made her very marriageable.  The book tracks the girls, who undergo the brutal feet-binding process, through girlhood, adolescence, and marriage in their small villages.  Along the way, they learn the womanly arts in the women's only chamber upstairs; knitting, embroidering, cooking, gardening, the women's secret language, as undergo the heartbreak of marrying someone they've never met, leaving their natal families, learning to cope being at the bottom of the social ladder in their new homes, with their mothers-in-law being in charge and their sole purpose to produce sons. 
As a reader, we learn about political instability, the consequences of opium addiction, cholera, feet-binding, family structure, expectations and roles of women, the importance of birth signs and Chinese festivals.  It's a really interesting read.  Lily is grounded, pragmatic, and naive;  Snow Flower is exotic, intelligent, and a dreamer.  They remain friends through all of it.  At the end the author has an afterward that explains the existence of a women's secret language (the language reserved for men is, I'm assuming, either Mandarin or Cantonese, but women wrote letters, poems, and stories in nu shu), that was discovered during the Cultural Revolution.  For thousands of years women utilized a language men couldn't read, although now its fallen by the wayside and is seldom used and rarely passed down to girls.  Fascinating home women find ways to survive in cultures that value them only for their uterus. 

Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

While perusing the Interwebs one day, I stumbled upon a list of books categorized by arbitrary levels of disturbing-ness.  I was surprised to find this was a fan favorite.  I remember V.C. Andrews having a big following in my high school, but I think I read maybe one of her books and I don't even remember the title.  I had never even heard of Flowers in the Attic.  Since I like to keep tabs on popular books so I'm not (too far) out of the loop, I downloaded this onto my Kindle Fire.

Flowers in the Attic starts with a typical suburban family; loving parents and four beautiful children the neighbors call Dresden Dolls. Their parents doted on their children and each other.  Christopher and Cathy are the two oldest, followed by a long gap by twins Cody and Carrie.  The Dollangangers reside in Pennsylvania, three females, three males, a hardworking father and seemingly devoted mother. Tragically, their father dies in a car accident on his birthday, leaving behind a devastated family with no means to pay the bills.  Out of options, the remaining 5 Dollangangers head to their grandparent's estate in Virginia.  The one caveat is that the four children must remain locked away in the attic while Mrs. Dollanganger returns to the good graces of her father and becomes the sole benefactress of his will.

The short stay in the attic turns very lengthy.  The children are brought food each day by their very stern grandmother who establishes an odd set of very strict rules.  Eventually, the children learn that their parents were actually related and her father disinherited her after the Dollangangers were married.  Her father is unaware that four children were born from that union, much less that they are living in the attic.

3 years go by.  Their mother becomes a stranger to them, eventually seldom coming to visit them, and finally remarries a man who is also living in the house and has no idea she has four kids living above them.  Her father eventually dies, but she never rescues the children, and continues to mislead her children. Meanwhile, upstairs Cathy and Christopher begin an incestuous brother/sister relationship and one of the twins dies.  Finally, finally, finally, they hatch a rescue plan and leave the estate.

I know this book was written for the young adult genre, but it had a lot of frustrating flaws.
1.  The house they are living in seems so large it cannot be real unless it is some of kind of palace.
2.  There's nothing really to indicate the mother would turn so drastically on her children.
3.  Despite being locked up with each other for a long period of time, even as teenagers, I really doubt that two siblings would begin an incestuous relationship even with blossoming hormones.
4.  Cathy and Christopher are really smart, disciplined people and it took them 3 years to finally  realize their mother didn't care about them and they finally escaped?  Leaving didn't necessarily mean they wouldn't see their mother again anyway.

The book was dark and disturbing, but also boring in parts.  Being locked up in the attic is only so interesting.  The most disturbing part of the book for me wasn't even the incest, it was the incident in which the grandmother thought Cathy was being a slut by flashing around her hair and tarred in her hair in her sleep after drugging her.  That is a sadistic grandmother.

Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Blind Assassin is on The List, and I've been meaning to read it for awhile after my sister fell in love with it.  I have read Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, which I sort of liked.  I wasn't nearly as interested in distopian societies when I read it probably 5 years ago, so it did not hold my attention well.

Blind Assassin held my attention very well.  The book cover is full of hype, which frustrates me to read since books really hold up to their stellar, one line reviews.  Iris is the older sister of Laura, a beautiful, pragmatic child who Iris helps raise, along with their housekeeper Reenie, after the early death of their mother.  Iris and Laura are the heiresses of a large button factory located near Toronto that reaches its pinnacle of glory post WW1.  In the intervening years, the sisters are schooled at home by tutors, mostly oblivious to the social changes happening in Canada, and all over the world, post WW1.

Iris marries young after the factory burns down and leaves the family with little options.  She has little feelings for her husband, or his controlling sister who takes over Iris' life, but she dutifully does her wifely duties, including having one daughter.  After their father dies, Laura moves in with Iris and her husband and is not so silent about her observances of her sister's marriage.

The book is interwoven by another story, The Blind Assassin, which is told by two unknown lovers who meet in secret.  The female forces the male to tell her a story, which becomes The Blind Assassin, a book published after the death of Laura.

I love the writing in this book.  It's so intelligent, thought provoking, and engaging.  The ending was beautiful; simple, and somewhat unexpected.  I know little of Canada, especially the history of social life in the time period between the two world wars.  That was interesting for me.  The book fluctuates between Iris telling the story as an old woman to Laura and Iris as children in the mansion.  Changes in time and perspective can get confusing and boring if not done well, but Atwood does it beautifully.

One of my favorite books I read in 2013.