Category Archives: Books

04/15/12

{365.106} I Could’ve Been the Next Dark Lord

Totally stayed up way too late last night fiddling with Pottermore… I’m not sure that there’s much more evidence you would need to prove that I’m a complete dork. It was definitely a lot of fun, and a great interactive way to enjoy the books, for all ages. But by far my favorite feature of Pottermore is that it’s full of awesome notes from J.K. Rowling on everything from why wizards don’t use the metric system to a disastrous account of the first (and only) double date between the Dursleys and Harry’s parents. Um, I love it. If she ever publishes a book full of nothing but Harry Potter “extras”, I would buy it immediately. It’s so fascinating to me to see how she created this huge world and populated it, gave it a culture, explained its quirks. This is why I prefer to write in the fantasy genre — I like worldbuilding too much.

You could probably also argue that this is why I like to play Sims 3 so much, but that’s partly worldbuilding/storytelling and mostly just me being a manipulative control freak who likes telling people what to do~~~~ Hahahaha. (Now is when you ask yourself the following questions: Is she joking? Is she serious? Should I run away now???)

Caution: the entirety of this post is all about Harry Potter, so if you’re not a fan or one of those people who think HP is evil, then you may not want to continue! Come back tomorrow when it’s all over. Haha. I’m putting the rest under the cut so that you can be on your merry way, if you so desire. I mean, I DO ramble endlessly about my Pottermore experience, my Voldemort-like tendencies, and other such things, so it only makes sense to allow readers to escape before it all begins. Hahaha.

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03/27/12

{365.87} I Examine My Reading Addiction

So, Bubba’s usually ready to turn in for the night by around… oh… 8:00pm. Especially the past four days or so, when I’ve been walking him hither and thither all over the apartment complex. I think he got used to waking up at 10am just like I did, but he seems to have an easier time with the waking-up-dreadfully-early process than I do. Though, I think this morning when I forced myself out of bed at 6:15, he was kind of like… seriously? We’re doing this AGAIN? And then he didn’t deign to get out of his own little bed on the floor until I’d already washed my face and gotten dressed. Whatever, dog.

Speaking of walking the dog all over the place, I am soooo out of shape because my legs are feeling the burn right now. LOL. We’ve been doing two 25-30 minute walks a day, once in the morning before work and again around 6:30-7pm. He’s doing really well with the number of walks reduced to twice a day, considering he used to go out three times or even four if he was being fussy. I’M STILL WORRIED ABOUT FRIDAY T-T I just want to get it over with and find out if he’ll be okay or not. But after Friday’s long shift, there will still be those weeks when I do three 12-hour shifts in a row, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be having anxiety attacks all day from imagining him vaulting off our balcony in despair. Okay, everyone is tired of hearing me freak out about leaving the dog in the apartment all day, so I’m moving on. Aakjhfkjsd.

This may not have been considered humanly possible, but it’s become clear to me that my book/library/Nook/reading addiction is truly spiraling into madness. I have 4 books checked out (one of which I’ve already finished), 1 already waiting to be picked up at the library, 2 in transit from other libraries to mine, 2 more that I requested today, 3 requests on the library’s e-book catalog (YOU CAN REQUEST E-BOOKS AND READ THEM FOR FREE OMG KSDHFKSJDHFDSKJHF FOAMING AT THE MOUTH), at least 6 or 7 books I’ve partially started or haven’t started yet on my Nook, 10 billion e-book samples of books I want to try out, just as many books on my Amazon wishlist, and YET MORE recommendations on Goodreads that I have been holding off on adding to my to-read list. Obviously, I lack self control in this aspect of my life. LOL.

I’m off tomorrow and Thursday, before the horrible, doom-filled day that will be Friday. These two days off are going to be devoted to hateful things like cleaning the entire house from top to bottom in anticipation of my mother arriving on Friday evening. (I can already see her disdainfully examining the dust lying undisturbed on our TV stand and making some sort of Asian Mom comment about it…) I briefly contemplated starting this today, but I was super tired when I got home from work and ended up passing out for 2 hours. I’m still going to try and get up early for the next two days just so waking up at freaking 5 in the freaking morning on Friday won’t immediately kill me. Gaaaaahhhhhhhhhh. Did I mention that all this has really been negatively affecting my writing progress? I’m pretty sure I’ve written all of 600 words between Saturday and today. I neeeeeeed to finish a chapter during these days off that I have. NEED TO. IT MUST HAPPEN. I must pry myself away from my library book pile and my e-book library and do some writing. It would be fairly idiotic and disappointing to come this far and then grind to a halt just because I’m back to working again.

Okay, bedtime for me. I leave you with the following Preschool Moment of the Day:

We were out on the playground just before lunch, when one of the four little boys runs up and pretends to bite another. The victim, of course, bursts into tears while the fledgling vampire runs for it. I go after the one who did the “biting” and give him the speech about how biting our friends is not okay, we need to use our words, et al etc and please will you go apologize? So he very meekly says okay, walks over to the other boy, and gives him a hug. Before he scampers off, I hear him say, “We thought you were so very tasty.” UM LOL. REALLY??? I have NO idea where he got that from. Also, I don’t know why he referred to himself as ‘we’.

03/12/12

{365.72} I Read Until My Eyeballs Pop

Well, fine, it wasn’t quite that extreme and I clearly still have both eyeballs in their sockets. But I did read for a long stretch of time, during which I paused only to eat dinner and update Goodreads. I got through one book and then moved on to Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, which is our March book club selection. I’m almost done with that one too; I expect to finish it before I go to bed in the wee hours of the morning. Ah, the lackadaisical life I lead T-T

Finished reading one of my library books, The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I would write a review, but I haven’t decided yet how I feel about writing reviews on this blog. I have several already posted from last year, before I started getting cold feet about doing them. Let’s just say that I very much wanted to like this book, and be awed by it, and enjoy it. I’d been wanting to read it for quite some time — there was a surprisingly long queue for it at my old library so I never could get it in on request. Lo and behold, I didn’t even have to wait a week before it came in at my new library. I’d read some reviews and it had gotten quite a lot of buzz, which had me in a state of anticipation. But I’m warning you now, this is NOT a review! This is a full blown rant. Don’t read it if you want to give this book a chance, or if you already read it and don’t want to get mad at me. I’m putting the rest of it in the magical land beyond the jump~

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03/11/12

{365.71} I Resurrect My Cookie Jar

YAY I HAVE A COOKIE JAR AGAIN!!! I promptly baked cookies to put in it. They’re chocolate chip and oh so delicious. They’re just as yummy now that they’ve cooled down as they were when we ate some fresh out of the oven yesterday evening (with milk, of course). Because of this, the contents of the jar have already been considerably depleted… haha.

Don’t come to my house if you have something against baked goods, because we have a LOT of those.

I spent a large part of my day trying to puzzle out four different tutorials for how to code my own WordPress theme, which was fairly frustrating. In the end, I had to flail my arms and ask Marjorie for help. (This always happens. Inevitably, I will start wanting to give up and go have a pity party for myself, which is when I start writing Marjorie an email.) I think my main problem is that there isn’t any one tutorial out there that best suits my learning style; this is why I have to cobble together four different ones just to get myself to understand properly. I mean, I don’t really want to just memorize where tags go, even though that seems like the most effective way to do it. The coding itself is adaptable and in the future, if I wanted to do a different style of theme, the code would adapt to it as well. There’s so many possibilities and I know that I’m not even beginning to scratch the surface there. But for now, I would like to understand how the tags work so that I can better remember where they go and why they go there. We’ll see how this goes… I made sure to just do a fresh WordPress install to test drive the theme on so that this blog doesn’t accidentally implode on itself if/when my attempts fail miserably.

In between pulling my hair out over WordPress, I updated my Goodreads account. Finally. I haven’t updated that since January, or maybe December. I used to do a reading challenge to read 50 books in 1 year, and I also had a blog for book reviews, but stopped keeping up with it in late 2010 and skipped the challenge entirely last year. Not that I wasn’t still reading, I mean there is hardly ever a time when I’m not; I just wasn’t blogging the books or keeping track of them. This year, however, I will be upping the challenge to 75 books. I haven’t decided if I’ll be doing any reviewing because I kind of feel like that would detract from focusing on my writing. But, Goodreads is easy to update and rate books between 1 and 5 stars, plus I have the iPhone app, so I will continue to maintain it there. I’m only at 4 books out of 75 this year, but I’ll catch up.

I’m sure it baffles some people that I read several books at once. At this time, I’m juggling three different ones. Why do I do this? Well, you know that phrase, “Your eyes were bigger than your stomach”? Okay, that’s how I am with books. I pile them up, and hoard them, because I want to read them all. This can’t take place through osmosis, as much as I would like it to. I start reading one book, and I’m enjoying myself immensely, but then I look over at my other books and think… you can’t be serious, it’s impossible for me to WAIT until I finish reading this one before I find out what happens in that other one. So, I find some kind of bookmark for my current book, open up a different book, and start reading that one too. Then the process repeats itself until I have anywhere between 2 and 5 books being read at the same time. I don’t have trouble keeping up, or starting and stopping. Some books are read best when I’m sitting and eating a snack. Some books are perfect for reading in bed. (As a result, I have books scattered everywhere. David scatters his shoes, the dog scatters his toys — I scatter my books.) I read them according to my mood. But then there are the books I own, and re-read. I’m always re-reading something I’ve already been through before, it’s just how I am. I seriously don’t know how to read just one book at a time. I like being able to drop in and out of them at will.

Okay, I’m ending this entry now because the time change has me all thrown off and I still have writing to do! Plus it’s Grocery Day tomorrow and I haven’t finished my list yet. UGH, Grocery Day. WHY.

03/8/12

{365.68} I Disappear Into a Temporal Rift

No, I’m not actually going to write about the lamp in our living room today (although it’s a great lamp and I’ve always liked it a lot)… I just happened to be messing around with my iPhone and Camera+ app, and this was the result. I’m going to be perfectly honest and admit that I was sucked into a rift in the time-space continuum, which effectively made me lose track of whatever it was that I’d planned to write about today.

You should be concerned about this because it’s very likely that what I had been planning to post about would’ve been infinitely more interesting and coherent than this.

Okay, so it wasn’t a temporal rift, it was freaking Sims 3. I suck. In my defense, the two expansion packs I was missing ended up mystically going on sale for 66% off on Amazon today. Once I realized this, it proceeded to dominate my entire day. Nerdy and lame? Yes. Do I care? No. Not after weeks of waiting for a good deal — I’m cheap, and willing to wage siege warfare until the price drops. (Sooner or later, someone’s gonna have to run a promotion… just saying.) I can’t justify purchasing an expansion pack for $30+, not if I can stick it out and get a better price through dogged determination and patience being stubborn. I snagged both for $10.19 each, as digital downloads, so they were playable after just two hours for download and installation time. I really love this method of buying games because there aren’t any cases or discs or other accoutrements to keep track of. You can download and reinstall whenever you need to. Also, product keys are easy to find, which means you don’t have to worry about losing them when you accidentally misplace the original packaging.

The only thing about doing anything to my existing Sims 3 install is that it’s so, so, SO nerve wracking. I have a history of running into colossal problems with Sims games, starting with Sims 2. It used to be that I couldn’t even run the game on my computer, which changed when David upgraded my video card. Even then, the game took almost 15 minutes just to load, and every tiny action within the gameplay itself could either take forever or cause a crash. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I finally went through and followed some tips/ran some diagnostics around December to figure out why on earth I couldn’t play the game the way it was supposed to be played. The result was me uninstalling and reinstalling the entire thing, and having to get rid of a large chunk of my custom content/mods. It now runs amazingly, although still crashes when overloaded. It just has a complete nervous breakdown if you ask too much of it, all at the same time. LOL. So, it’s a nail biting experience installing expansions, wondering if doing so will cause  my game to self destruct. Just last week I installed the latest patch and immediately regretted it, all kinds of randomness resulted from that. (SIMS 3 PATCHES ARE EVIL.)  Happily, both of the expansions I bought today installed and played just fine. I made sure to be super paranoid and back up all my save files beforehand.

Okay, everyone is sufficiently bored and all eyes are officially glazed over after my Sims 3 rambling, so I’m now changing the subject~~

Or I would, except I really don’t have much of anything else to talk about. Lately I’ve been very preoccupied with library books and trying to maintain some semblance of control over my impulse to systematically request every single book on my Amazon wishlist from the library. They just make this too easy. All I have to do is log in, but even that takes only 2 seconds. Then I search for a book and click the giant REQUEST IT button to have this book found for me and placed on the hold shelf. This takes next to no effort. Every time I get an email saying a request has come in, it’s like a miracle has taken place. Lo and behold — I asked for a book, it was hunted down for me, and my name was taped to it so no one else could go frolicking in and snatch it away. THANK YOU, LIBRARY. Except no, NO THANK YOU LIBRARY, because of this marvelous system I get next to nothing done around here…!!! This isn’t even factoring in the handheld impulse buying machine that is my Nook. Do you know how much willpower I have to expend in order to prevent myself from clicking the Buy Now button 10 trillion times a day? I think I need an intervention. LOL.

03/5/12

{365.65} I Channel My Inner Pioneer Girl

I can safely say that I never run out of reading material. My Amazon wishlist is essentially a glorified To-Read list, a running log of every book I’ve decided I need to experience. And then there’s my Nook library, which looks like I own tons of e-books but actually is just a giant digital bookshelf full of samples. I hoard them, vow to read them, all of them, in the fullness of time. The truth is, the act of reading is mostly a reflex to me. It’s as fundamental as breathing. I use books as medicine, as tickets to elsewhere, as hiding places. Books, and the characters who dwell within them, have always been my friends.

In my stack of library books at the moment is Wendy McClure’s The Wilder Life, which I just finished this evening. The author, having been a fan of the classic Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reaches adulthood and makes the decision to explore “Laura world” in every way she knows how. This includes churning her own butter, sleeping in a covered wagon during a prairie hailstorm, visiting all of the “Little Houses” scattered throughout several different states, and even encountering the equivalent of a creepy End Times cult while trying out homesteading on a real working farm. The book is terribly funny, especially for someone like me, who also grew up loving the series and feeling a kinship with Laura, the little prairie girl who has been the companion of so many others like me since the first book in the series was published in 1932. I can understand why Wendy McClure felt the need to embark on this epic foray into the world of Little House, to establish this connection with a semi-fictional character and to walk in Laura’s shoes. I’ve always kind of wanted to do the same thing! I guess I never realized that there were other people like me who thought Laura Ingalls was their very best friend. (There are TONS of us psychos out there, run away now while you can~)

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02/28/12

{365.59} I’m Convinced the Library is Magical

As much as I love my Nook, and as awesome as it is to have an e-book appear instantly with just the press of a button, there’s just nothing quite like the library. I can’t remember a time when the library wasn’t a magical place for me. I used to spend entire Saturdays wandering in and out of the stacks, starting in third grade when my parents started letting me walk to our public library on my own. In fact, to this day, I still have a hard time making myself leave. (Is it possible to LIVE at the library? Would they let me sleep over…??)

Anyway, today I decided my project would be to figure out where the closest public library was. This in itself was a novel idea, considering that for the past five years, there wasn’t really a question of which library to go to. We only had one library in Wichita Falls, which was downtown, and mostly occupied by shady people who only went for the free Internet. The selection wasn’t always the best, and it wasn’t like they had other local branch libraries to get book requests from — if you wanted a book that wasn’t in their collection, the nearest inter-library loan possibility was in Lawton, Oklahoma. Still, the library is the library, and once I figured out that you could request books, I got over its limitations. In contrast, here in Las Vegas there are way too many libraries to choose from. In our area alone, there are two within several miles of this apartment complex. I went with the one that was 3 miles down the road, and it was easy enough to find, even with my convoluted iPhone GPS.

First of all, there was a security guard at the entrance, with a giant screen comprised of many smaller screens showing security camera footage. She looked a bit bored, and seemed to have drawn her eyebrows on a bit lopsided, but since I’d always wished there was a security guard at the Wichita Falls library, I was glad to see one here. They had a very small customer service desk manned by two people who were dealing with an extremely angry woman. She was ranting mutinously, in a British accent, about how having to pay $1.00 for a replacement library card just because she forgot hers at home was, “bad customer service,” and “unreal.” I think the other person at the desk was grateful for a reason to leave that conversation to her co-worker, because she waved me over the instant she saw me… hahaha. (“OMG! A NORMAL PERSON! PLEASE COME OVER SO I CAN TALK TO YOU INSTEAD! PLEASE DON’T YELL AT ME!” I definitely know how that feels. LOL.) I’d already signed up for my library card online and been given a temporary bar code, so she just asked for my ID and proof of address and handed me my shiny new library card to sign on the back. PLUS, it came with a smaller keychain version. SO THIS IS WHAT LIBRARIES ARE LIKE NOWADAYS!!!! (Sorry, I still marvel at things like this after coming from a small town where new stuff takes a little while to arrive.)

When I was cut loose with my new library card, I went exploring. It’s a very modern and fairly new library, with giant floor-to-ceiling windows and (according to the website), eco-friendly construction. There was a vending and snack area that also contained a few shelves of books for sale, and a giant computer lab in the back. But by far the coolest, most amazing thing ever was being told that this library is strictly self check-out only. I almost did a victory dance. I LOVE SELF CHECK-OUT. I went to admire the ten self check-out stations on my way to get books. There isn’t even a circulation desk, meaning if you forget your library card like the angry British lady, you have to pay for a replacement or you just don’t get to check books out that day. I have no problem with this, especially because I now have the library card attached to my keys. It would be pretty difficult to forget it at home that way. LOL. So yeah, then I went meandering through the world of endless books for around half an hour or so and then got ready to check out. Second most amazing thing ever: I didn’t even have to scan the barcodes on my books! All I had to do was set them down on the counter and they were magically added to my list. (All together now: “SO THIS IS WHAT LIBRARIES ARE LIKE NOWADAYS!!!!!”) Then I clicked sign off, and it printed out my receipt with due dates. Voila, done! Time to go home! If I can pry myself away from this amazing technology… *still excited about it*

Okay, so those of you who are accustomed to advanced libraries with cool gadgets can quit laughing at me now. I MOVED HERE FROM THE PRAIRIE OKAY. We had the one library with two circulation desks and two self check-out stations that did not magically scan your books for you. I think the most high tech feature they had was being able to reserve and request books online. Hell, you couldn’t even change your address online, you could just REQUEST for it to be changed and they would do it for you at the counter in person next time you came T-T

Don’t get me wrong, there were many things I loved about Wichita Falls, and I do miss it from time to time. I miss the friendly people (even if sometimes they creeped me out because I didn’t grow up where people said hi to you as you walked through the parking lot…), and I miss knowing where everything was. I miss seeing green grass, which we don’t have here in Nevada in large quantities. Mostly we have beautiful landscapes of rocks, dirt, and sand. But I also like living in a bigger city because there’s so much variety. There’s more than one Target to go to if one withholds popcorn from you. There’s more than one mall to shop at if you don’t like the others. And, there’s more than one library, meaning MORE BOOKS!

Alright, I’m leaving now because I have library books~~~

01/4/12

2012 Historical Fiction Nerd-Out Time

Pretty sure someone out there is fully aware of my addiction to historical fiction, because there are THREE — count them, THREE — books that dabble in that genre coming out between now and March that I desperately need. NEED, I say! I’m so excited about them that I’m going to blog about all three right now before I explode. I mean, hello! These books are about some of my favorite historical events/people/places! Yes, I’m really lame and have pet subjects within the realm of history. For example, World War II. I like any book about people living through WWII, maybe because my own grandmother was a teenager in the occupied Philippines during that time and her stories sparked an interest in me from childhood. I never get tired of the resilience that is always evident in a story set during this period — whether its about the London Blitz, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust, it doesn’t matter. These stories contain so much life, persisting in the face of death, and above all serving as a reminder that hope is something you can’t quench. Definitely love me some 1939-1945. Oh, but anyway, I digress! Onward to the books!

No One Is Here Except All Of Us by Ramona Ausubel
Release Date: Feb 2, 2012

“In 1939, the families in a remote Jewish village in Romania feel the war close in on them. Their tribe has moved and escaped for thousands of years- across oceans, deserts, and mountains-but now, it seems, there is nowhere else to go. Danger is imminent in every direction, yet the territory of imagination and belief is limitless. At the suggestion of an eleven-year-old girl and a mysterious stranger who has washed up on the riverbank, the villagers decide to reinvent the world: deny any relationship with the known and start over from scratch. Destiny is unwritten. Time and history are forgotten. Jobs, husbands, a child, are reassigned. And for years, there is boundless hope. But the real world continues to unfold alongside the imagined one, eventually overtaking it, and soon our narrator-the girl, grown into a young mother-must flee her village, move from one world to the next, to find her husband and save her children, and propel them toward a real and hopeful future. A beguiling, imaginative, inspiring story about the bigness of being alive as an individual, as a member of a tribe, and as a participant in history, No One Is Here Except All Of Us explores how we use storytelling to survive and shape our own truths.”

Um, okay, I already love this!!! First, note the year: 1939. WORLD WAR II. There are many stories of Jews in hiding during the Holocaust, but this is the first I’ve read of an entire village attempting it. And that last line in the summary, concerning the way storytelling is used to survive and create your own truth, is so beguiling that I can hardly remain in my chair. I must have this book. MUST.

Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt
Release Date: Feb 7, 2012

“As the bombs of the Blitz rain down on Britain, one young girl is evacuated to the countryside. She is struggling to make sense of her new wartime life. Then she is given a copy of Asgard and the Gods – a book of ancient Norse myths – and her inner and outer worlds are transformed.

How could this child know that fifty years on many of the birds and flowers she took for granted on her walks to school would become extinct? War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the recognition of impermanence in the world are just some of the threads that A.S. Byatt weaves into this most timely of books. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this is a landmark work of fiction from one of the world’s truly great writers.”

London Blitz + Norse Mythology + Post-Apocalyptic Plot = YES. This sounds brilliant. I was the world’s foremost mythology nerd in elementary school, so anything myth-related immediately snags my attention. I really want to read more A.S. Byatt; I downloaded the sample chapter of her novel The Children’s Book and soooo want to the entire book now but I’m waiting to purchase in case there’s a library copy. (I spend way too much of my pocket change on e-books nowadays…) Another novel of hers, Possession, was awarded with the Booker Prize and also made into a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow in 2003. Btw, A.S. Byatt is Dame Antonia Byatt. If the Queen loves her, I also love her. The end.

Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison
Release Date: March 6, 2012

“St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin’s body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his family—including the headstrong Prince Alyosha. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputin’s miraculous healing powers, Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to Aloysha, who suffers from hemophilia, a blood disease that keeps the boy confined to his sickbed, lest a simple scrape or bump prove fatal.

Two months after Masha arrives at the palace, the tsar is forced to abdicate, and Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha grieve the loss of their former lives, finding solace in each other’s company. To escape the confinement of the palace, they tell stories—some embellished and some entirely imagined—about Nikolay and Alexandra’s courtship, Rasputin’s many exploits, and the wild and wonderful country on the brink of an irrevocable transformation. In the worlds of their imagination, the weak become strong, legend becomes fact, and a future that will never come to pass feels close at hand.”

Hold the phone — this novel is about that most tragic of families, the Romanovs. Oh. Heck. Yes. The mystery of the missing Anastasia (and the awesome animated movie~) is only one thing I find compelling about the Romanov story. Now we’re throwing in a star-crossed love as well??? IS IT MARCH YET???

And now that I’ve shared those with you, I’m off to impatiently wait for them to come out. *flailing arms*

12/28/11

Book Review: The Hedgewitch Queen

TITLE: The Hedgewitch Queen
AUTHOR: Lilith Saintcrow
**e-Book only, currently only $2.99 during December**

For Vianne di Rocancheil, life at the royal court of Arquitaine is a dance of secrets and treachery. She was brought to the Palais as a child to become the handmaiden to none other than Lisele, heir to the throne, and this means that it’s also Vianne’s job to protect against intrigue and jealousy. Despite how good she is at maneuvering her way through court, Vianne really prefers being in the garden and learning hedgewitchery — a form of magic based on the strength of the earth and the power of herbal remedies. Always with her nose in a book when not following Lisele from one engagement to another, Vianne juggles her natural tendency towards keeping to herself with the duty of guarding her Princesse from any harm that might befall her in social circles. But, despite her skill and dedication, there is nothing Vianne can do when Lisele is murdered in an act of regicide against the ruling family of Arquitaine. Vianne is the only survivor, due to circumstance and the intervention of Tristan d’Arcenne, the captain of the guard. With the kingdom’s most important relic pressed into her hands by a dying Lisele, Vianne has no choice but to run before she can be captured as well. Not knowing who to trust, and wary of the power in the Aryx that hangs around her neck, she must also come to terms with the fact that her own ancestry is linked to that of the royals she served.

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12/21/11

Book Review: The House At Riverton

TITLE: The House At Riverton
AUTHOR: Kate Morton
PAGES: 480

Some memories are so powerful that they stand the test of time. For Grace Reeves, now on her deathbed, her tenure as a maid on the crumbling English estate of Riverton during the years preceding, and during, the first World War remain as vivid as ever. In a time when Edwardian social structure was giving way to more modern thought, Riverton was still clinging to the days of dressing for dinner and lavish balls. Grace arrived at the mansion as a young girl and became the keeper of secrets that were entrusted to her by master’s grandchildren. Hannah, Emmeline, and David were everything Hannah knew she’d never be: beautiful, rich, privileged. She forms a bond with the children, especially Hannah, and finds herself caught up in a family’s web of betrayals, lies, and sorrow. 98 years later, Grace still bears the weight of what truly happened, one summer night at Riverton. It is a story only she can tell, about the death of a poet named R.S. Hunter and the parts played by her own beloved Hannah and Emmeline in the mystery surrounding his alleged suicide.

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