The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffman

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Summary from GoodReads:

A tale of madness, deceit and murder, The Sandman has spawned countless adaptations and informs much of modern horror.

My Review:

There is absolutely no reason for people to avoid reading this story.  First of all, it’s short – about 30 pages (and the ones I read were TINY pages).  Secondly, it’s so. freaking. amazing.  Seriously! Read it!  Now I’ll tell you why.

For my Seminar in European Literature this semester we are studying the “uncanny” – what the word means, how to define it ourselves, how it’s defined in stories, and we’re reading all sorts of fantastic things like Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Freud’s essays, and other various fantastic, “uncanny” stories.  Our class this semester started out with a bang – namely The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman.  You are familiar with Hoffman, although you might not realize it.  That famous Nutcracker story that graces the ballet stage every Christmas? Yup. He wrote that story.

So now that you’ve sat back and said “Oh! That guy!”, let me introduce you to the wonders of The Sandman.  When you read this story (and you will, won’t you?) I want you to think about the following things:

What is the reality in the book?

Just how creepy are dolls??

What about the story really made your hair stand on end?

Written in epistolary style, The Sandman grows in intensity, the story taking strange twists and turns until coming to an amazing, horrifying climax.  I seriously shivered typing that while I recalled it.  I wish there was a way to make my words literally compel you to shift away from this review and go find a copy, but there isn’t… or is there? Go read it! (Here’s a lovely link to it!)

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Things Mean A Lot

Vishy’s Blog

Composing Amelia by Alison Strobel

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Summary from GoodReads:

Composing Amelia, is a journey through the introduction of mental illness into a young marriage and the resulting havoc that can be wreaked by the disease. A young Los Angeles marriage is put to the test and two careers are threatened when Amelia’s husband Marcus is hired as a pastor at a remote Nebraska church. The move results in resentment and sparks the onset of mental illness in Amelia. Can Amelia’s faith stand up to the oppression in her mind and the dysfunction in her relationship with her workaholic pastor husband? Will Marcus recognize the mistakes he’s made in time to make things right—or will the darkness in Amelia’s head push her off the edge before Marcus can be the husband he’s meant to be? And how can God use such broken people to turn around the lives of the small flock of believers to whom He’s led them?

My Review:

I.. get the feeling this book was supposed to be about mental illness.  Instead, what I got was a story about an incredibly immature couple who make unrealistic choices over, and over again.  This book paints Christianity, rather.. Christians, as being incredibly naive, and selfish.  Then – story aside, the characters were annoyingly two-dimensional.  There was nothing but fluff there – and don’t get me started on the musical references when it comes to Amelia.

All I have to say about the musical aspect of the story is this – if you do not have access to a professional, classical musician when you write a story like this, then get access to one.  Having played piano, played classical music (as in, the kind Amelia would have been playing at Julliard), you could not catch me with a keyboard for my permanent practice.  There’s too many different sizes of pianos (if you absolutely cannot have a Grand).  This is just one of the things that hit me and, yes, I know I’m a music snob, but it really brings the story down and makes me wish that there’d just be more research done into it (by the way, a “song” has words, classical pieces do not).

Then there’s the husband, the minister, who’s been offered a position out of nowhere in Nebraska.  Really?  And because there’s not enough tension between him and Amelia, we have to throw in complications and.. ugh ok, this review is so disjointed by this point and honestly, I just don’t care about this book enough to go back and re-write it. This is Christian “fluff”- it’s feel-good nonsense that’ll give you a warm and fuzzy feeling as long as you don’t look too deep for a message, because it’s just not there.

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Cat’s Thoughts

Michelle’s Book Review Blog

 The Aviary by Kathleen O’Dell

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Summary from GoodReads:

Twelve-year-old Clara Dooley has spent her whole life in the Glendoveer mansion, where her mother is a servant to the kind and elderly matron of the house. Clara has never known another home. In fact, she’s confined to the grand estate due to a mysterious heart condition. But it’s a comfortable life, and if it weren’t for the creepy squawking birds in the aviary out back, a completely peaceful one too.

But once old Mrs. Glendoveer passes away, Clara comes to learn many dark secrets about the family. The Glendoveers suffered a horrific tragedy: their children were kidnapped, then drowned. And their father George Glendoveer, a famous magician and illusionist, stood accused until his death. As Clara digs deeper and deeper into the terrifying events, the five birds in the aviary seem to be trying to tell her something. And Clara comes to wonder: what is their true identity? Clara sets out to solve a decades-old murder mystery—and in doing so, unlocks a secret in her own life, too. Kathleen O’Dell deftly weaves magic, secret identities, evil villians, unlikely heroes, and the wonder of friendship into a mystery adventure with all the charm of an old fashioned classic.

My Review:

This is what I love about literature.  That I can pick up a book like The Aviary and enjoy the story, smile and put it down.  Then, I can pick up a book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and see very, very interesting parallels between The Aviary and a story about seven ravens.  And all of the sudden, The Aviary takes on entirely different overtones.

So this story is, unfortunately, predictable – but in spite of that, it’s fun.  It’s a fantastic story for middle-graders, and even though I guessed everything that was happening just before it was revealed, I still enjoyed the revelation when it happened.  There’s elements of The Secret Garden, the Grimm’s Fairy Tale mentioned about, and some other bits and pieces of childhood favorites, and everything meshes together to create a thoroughly enchanting world – I mean, what little girl or boy wouldn’t love the thought of a secret child locked away in an old mansion? (Although, now that I think about it – the story was on par with the Grimm’s Tales in a way!)

This is one I recommend if you are looking for a fairy-tale-like story with a bit of a darker tone to it.

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Chicks Dig Books

Night Swim by Jessica Keener

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Summary from GoodReads:

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Kunitz lives in a posh, suburban world of 1970 Boston. From the outside, her parents’ lifestyle appears enviable – a world defined by cocktail parties, expensive cars, and live-in maids to care for their children – but inside their five-bedroom house, all is not well for the Kunitz family. Coming home from school, Sarah finds her well-dressed, pill-popping mother lying disheveled on their living room couch. At night, to escape their parents’ arguments, Sarah and her oldest brother, Peter, find solace in music, while her two younger brothers retreat to their rooms and imaginary lives. Any vestige of decorum and stability drains away when their mother dies in a car crash one terrible winter day. Soon after, their father, a self-absorbed, bombastic professor begins an affair with a younger colleague. Sarah, aggrieved, dives into two summer romances that lead to unforeseen consequences. In a story that will make you laugh and cry, Night Swim shows how a family, bound by heartache, learns to love again.

My Review:

This book surprised the heck out of me.  I don’t know what I loved more – Jessica Keener’s descriptions of the world contained within the book, or her ability to really capture the voice of each and every individual character. When I picked up Night Swim and started to read, I struggled a little bit to find a groove, figure out what Keener was doing, but man – once I got into a groove I couldn’t put this book down, to the detriment of the stacks upon stacks of homework I had to do.

A sort of coming-of-age story, but also a story about relationships between parents and children, different races and classes, religions, and more. This was a hodge-podge of everything that is dynamite in a story, and instead of overwhelming that story with too much, it worked very, very well, creating a compelling story that’s been stuck in my mind since I put the book down.

Every once in a while I pick up a book that I wouldn’t normally pick up in a book store.  The biggest complaint about this book is the cover, I find it way too boring and bland considering the content it’s hiding.  If I had seen it in a bookstore, I just wouldn’t have been interested – but I didn’t.  Instead I was hooked by a description and that hook was enough to get me to look past the cover and find the story.

Y’all, this one was very much worth the read.

About the Author

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Tribulations by Ken Shufeldt

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Summary from GoodReads:

An asteroid storm has obliterated the Earth. Billy and Linda West have built enough space-going arks to save a small number of people who now roam the void in search of a new home.

 

Desperate to find a safe haven, Billy makes a dangerous attempt to exceed the speed of light. When his plans go terribly wrong, the Wests’ severely-damaged ship is separated from the fleet and left drifting near a mysterious planet.

 

This world’s conditions are hospitable—but its inhabitants are not. Suddenly the Wests and their fellow survivors are caught in the middle of an ancient war between two brutal nations. Faced with horrific dangers, they are forced to choose a side just to survive.

My Review:

You know, I’m willing to overlook names like Billy and Linda Lou if the story is good, and draws me in (and it’d have to be damn good to make me feel like I’m not reading about some hicks in outer space).  Seriously though, that’s a personal thing.. I enjoy good character names, and these just seemed as if the author just didn’t give a damn about his characters – which becomes even more evident in his story.

If this story had been recited to me, orally, at bedtime, in increments, by my grandfather, I would have loved it.  It moved at a quick pace, and was written in “everyday speak” sort of language.  But that doesn’t translate to the page well.  There needs to be detail, and description.  An author should not write about how there is a language barrier between an alien race and the crew aboard a spaceship and then, a few lines later, solve that issue by saying Billy made some translation devices for everyone and they all could understand.

It’s not that easy!

There needs to be some depth to the story.  There needs to be actual time passing, don’t tell me “…a few weeks later”, write about something that happened to make me understand that time is, indeed, passing.  Did he face any difficulties?  I mean, creating a translation device, that seems pretty interesting – tell me more about it.

Furthermore, don’t create situations that you have an easy answer to.  I felt like every obstacle facing Linda and Billy was easily solved, way too easily solved, with so little actual writing space between the problem and the answer that I barely had time to wrap my mind around the issue before it had been solved.

Also – never a good idea to start a book with the morning after a wedding night.  That felt uncomfortable and weird.

I really was psyched up about this book – I wanted to enjoy a good science fiction book, and when I saw that TOR had mailed this one to me I jumped around the house and talked to everyone about it.  But man, I am so. damn. disappointed. by this story.

Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea by Morgan Callan Rogers

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Summary from GoodReads:

A captivating debut, introducing a spirited young heroine coming of age in coastal Maine during the early 1960s.

When her mother disappears during a weekend trip, Florine Gilham’s idyllic childhood is turned upside down. Until then she’d been blissfully insulated by the rhythms of family life in small town Maine; watching from the granite cliffs above the sea for her father’s lobster boat to come into port, making bread with her grandmother, and infiltrating the summer tourist camps with her friends. But with her mother gone, the heart falls out of Florine’s life and she and her father are isolated as they struggle to manage their loss. Both sustained and challenged by the advice and expectations of her family and neighbors, Florine grows up with her spirit intact. And when her father’s past comes to call, she must accept that life won’t ever be the same while keeping her mother vivid in her memories. With Fannie Flagg’s humor and Elizabeth Stroud’s sense of place, this debut is an extraordinary snapshot of a bygone America through the eyes of an inspiring girl blazing her own path to womanhood.

My Review:

This book charmed the heck outta me.  Right away, while reading a description of a time long past, a coast I’d never seen, and a girl and her mother making a spontaneous trip, I fell in love.  Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea is the perfect coming-of-age story for an older generation of women, and for the younger generation as well so they can get a glimpse of what life was like.

Here’s what I love the most about this captivating little story.  There are no neat endings, no tidy wrap-ups, and no cliches.  Instead there is heartfelt emotion, and it’s raw.. and it hurts, and I wanted to rage right along with Florine at the unfairness of life – but bravo to Rogers for making life unfair, because that’s what made this book real.  It was so real I could smell the salty air, and I could see the hot tears on Florine’s face, and feel her rage as she acts out against the adults in her life, you know – the adults who actually stuck around for her.

When I first finished this book, I sat it down and I looked at it and I thought.. that was okay, but .. do I want more?  And now that I’ve had time to sit back and think, to let the story settle, I am really, really appreciating this story for being the gem it is.

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Chicks Dig Books

Revealing Eden by Victoria Foyt

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Summary from GoodReads:

Eden Newman must mate before her 18th birthday in six months or she’ll be left outside to die in a burning world. But who will pick up her mate-option when she’s cursed with white skin and a tragically low mate-rate of 15%? In a post-apocalyptic, totalitarian, underground world where class and beauty are defined by resistance to an overheated environment, Eden’s coloring brands her as a member of the lowest class, a weak and ugly Pearl. If only she can mate with a dark-skinned Coal from the ruling class, she’ll be safe. Just maybe one Coal sees the Real Eden and will be her salvation her co-worker Jamal has begun secretly dating her. But when Eden unwittingly compromises her father’s secret biological experiment, she finds herself in the eye of a storm and thrown into the last area of rainforest, a strange and dangerous land. Eden must fight to save her father, who may be humanity’s last hope, while standing up to a powerful beast-man she believes is her enemy, despite her overwhelming attraction. Eden must change to survive but only if she can redefine her ideas of beauty and of love, along with a little help from her “adopted aunt” Emily Dickinson.

My Review:

I don’t do pure negative reviews very often – usually there’s some sort of saving grace in a book, a storyline I like, a character I admired, something I can pull from the book, but I can’t do it here.

Let’s look at the list of things that got to me:

1. Reverse racism.  Foyt tried an experiment and, in my opinion, failed.  Something that is a basic cornerstone of good writing is show, don’t tell.  Don’t include a word and then reference it as being a “racist” term, in those exact words!  There’s no need to turn history around to prove a point either.  White-face bands?  Reverse slavery/abuse?  The whole idea just rubbed me the wrong way – especially since the idea for her earth was actually a good one, and so much could have been done with it that was fresh and new.

2. Beastiality.  Have we gotten to the point that we’re angel/demon/vampire/werewolf/witch/mermaid/fairy -’d out?  Do we really need to turn to beastial creatures to get that hot, romance-y, steam fix?  I cannot tell you how much times “tail” was mentioned that seemed to get Eden all hot and bothered, and oh my goodness, it gave me the heebie-jeebies.

3. Plot.  I couldn’t really find one.  I mean, I could find a spoiled brat of a girl, but .. was the plot her intention to actually get away? or was it that she protests too much? or was it that.. you know, I don’t know.  If you read this book, and like it, please tell me what the plot was?  75% in, I was talking about this book to a friend, and she asked what the plot was and it blew me away that I couldn’t articulate it.

I love dystopia books, I love science fiction, I love a good story with racial tension in it, it gets my mind working (Go read Tankborn by Karen Sandler).  But, other than a spark of what could have been, I just didn’t find much of anything to like in this story.

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Books Glorious Books

The Aussie Zombie

The Devil’s Queen by Jeanne Kalogridis

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Summary from GoodReads:

Confidante of Nostradamus, scheming mother-in-law to Mary, Queen of Scots, and architect of the bloody St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Catherine de Medici is one of the most maligned monarchs in history. In her latest historical fiction, Jeanne Kalogridis tells Catherine’s story—that of a tender young girl, destined to be a pawn in Machiavellian games.

Born into one of Florence’s most powerful families, Catherine was soon left a fabulously rich heiress by the early deaths of her parents. Violent conflict rent the city state and she found herself imprisoned and threatened by her family’s enemies before finally being released and married off to the handsome Prince Henry of France.

Overshadowed by her husband’s mistress, the gorgeous, conniving Diane de Poitiers, and unable to bear children, Catherine resorted to the dark arts of sorcery to win Henry’s love and enhance her fertility—for which she would pay a price. Against the lavish and decadent backdrop of the French court, and Catherine’s blood-soaked visions of the future, Kalogridis reveals the great love and desire Catherine bore for her husband, Henry, and her stark determination to keep her sons on the throne.

My Review:

So the first thing that caught my eye in the summary of this book was Mary, Queen of Scots.  I’m ashamed to admit right now that whenever I hear that name I immediately think of Jen Pringle and Anne Shirley from those indulgent PBS movies.  So, once I put that hurdle behind me I was able to give Catherine her due.

I love books about strong women.  I think, to be a pawn like these women were, and make a place for yourself would have been so difficult, especially when faced with the idea that a warm bath just isn’t what it is today, and there’s no Facebook to blow off steam after a big argument.  While The Devil’s Queen delved a little too much into the fantastic side for me (there is so much witchcraft and sorcery in this book, it was disconcerting), I really, really enjoyed getting to know Catherine, especially as I didn’t have much information on her before reading this.

If Jeanne Kalogridis’s research is true, Catherine was one scheming woman – but in a good sense.  She knew which battles to pick, and how to manipulate her husband just so.  She was a good mother, anxious to see her sons and daughters succeed in life, and she loved them fiercely.

One thing I was educated on through this book (and having listened to some music centered around it last semester, found myself saying OH! so that’s what happened) is the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.  Y’all, that was a bloody battle, and if you don’t know anything about it I suggest you go look it up.  Like, right now.

This is an historical book that, despite its bulk, seems to make time fly.  I was thoroughly engrossed by the story, and the skill with which Jeanne tells it – I just wish it’d focused a little more on the historical accuracy and less on the fantastical aspect.

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A Journey in Reading

The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton

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Summary from GoodReads:

First published in 1958 and set in the early 17th century, this bestselling novel—and follow-up to Katherine—follows Elizabeth Winthrop, a courageous Puritan woman who finds herself at odds with her heritage and surroundings. A real historical figure, Elizabeth married into the family of Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In those times of hardship, famine, and Indian attacks, many believed that the only way to prosper was through the strong, bigoted, and theocratic government that John Winthrop favored. Defying the government and her family, Elizabeth befriends famous heretic Anne Hutchinson, challenges an army captain, and dares to love as her heart commanded. Through Elizabeth’s three marriages, struggles with her passionate beliefs, and countless rebellions, a powerful tale of fortitude, humiliation, and ultimate triumph shines through.

My Review:

This could, quite possibly, be one of the most depressing books I’ll read this year.  Seriously, poor Elizabeth cannot catch a break here.

The first part of this quite hefty novel is set in England – we meet Elizabeth as a child, hopelessly infatuated with her cousin, struggling against the disapproval of her uncle, and trying to contain her strong will.  All the while, as I was reading this book, I was reminded that there was a whole lot of research done (and it’s visible in the writing) and that Elizabeth was a real person – not just a character made up and given a hard life.  This woman lived through the prejudices, the horrors of poor life – and I do mean poor in a sense that no one today could possibly understand.

I also had been under the impression that the Puritans were unjustly persecuted – but from the portrayal of them in this book… I don’t know if I could have lived as a Puritan.  Y’all, they were some whacked folks. Rules, regulations, restrictions – this was the life they led.  Elizabeth was handed over and over a really hard portion of life, but she handled it with grace that was admirable.

This was a seriously long book – and I’d only recommend it if you are really interested in learning about Puritan life and the establishment of families in New England.  Overall, most of the history in this book was filled with new facts for me, so I consider that a win, but it’s definitely not a book I’d read for pleasure.

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The Literate Housewife