Follow Friday

If you could only have ONE – one book – for the rest of your life. Don’t cheat…what would it be?


It would have to either be the Complete Sherlock Holmes Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, or Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. I can't choose between them, though.

WWW Wednesdays

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?






Currently, I'm reading Anarchy by James Treadwell.

















I just finished reading The Glass Ocean by Lori Baker. You can read my review here.




Next, I'll probably read The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly.

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


From Anarchy by James Treadwell

“Time, though infinite, is paradoxically also short, and, to be blunt, getting shorter.”  

The Glass Ocean by Lori Baker

"I write in retrospect, from the vantage of a distant shore." Flame-haired, six-foot-two in stocking feet, eighteen-year-old Carlotta Dell’oro recounts the lives of her parents—solitary glassmaker Leopoldo Dell’oro and beautiful, unreachable Clotilde Girard—and discovers in their loves and losses, their omissions and obsessions, thecircumstances of her abandonment and the weight of her inheritance. Thomas Pynchon calls debut novelist Lori Baker �a storyteller with uncanny access to the Victorians, not only to the closely woven texture of their days but also to the dangerous nocturnal fires being attended to in their hearts.”

Carlotta’s story begins in 1841, when Leo and Clotilde meet aboard the Narcissus, on an expedition led by Clotilde’s magnanimous, adventuring father. Leo is commissioned to draw the creatures of the deep sea, but is bewitched instead by golden Clotilde, beginning a devotion that will prove inescapable. Clotilde meanwhile sees only her dear papa, but when he goes missing she is pushed to Leo, returning with him to the craggy English shores of Whitby, the place to which Leo vowed he would never return.

There they form an uneasy coexistence, lost to one another. The events of the Narcissus haunt them, leaving Clotilde grieving for her father, while Leo becomes possessed by the work of transforming his sea sketches into glass. But in finding his art he surrenders Clotilde, and the distance between the two is only magnified by the birth of baby Carlotta.

Years have passed, and Carlotta is now grown. A friend from the past comes to Whitby, and with his arrival sets into motion the Dell’oros’ inevitable disintegration. In hypnotic, inimitable prose Lori Baker’s The Glass Ocean transforms a story of family into something as otherworldly and mesmerizing as life beneath the sea itself.

This has to be one of the most beautifully written books I’ve read so far this year. The prose’s lushness left me stunned many times, and the story itself is delicately written.

I loved the way the story was told, with the narrator weaving the plot along, almost making it happen as she imagines it. There were so many fabulous details of the Victorian period, including details to do with ships and seafaring, that the reader really felt immersed in the age. The story is like an old, kind of worn piece of lace that is lightly yellowing, intricate and pungent.

The characters, especially Clotilde, are fascinating. The author manages to bring them to life in such a way that they are never overwhelmed by the atmosphere or the details. This is not easy to achieve in such an elaborate novel as this one is. Characters usually fall by the wayside when details are so strong and the Gothic atmosphere is so rich, so I was so glad to find that it was not the case in this one.

If you love literary fiction, historical fiction, or both, and enjoy gorgeous writing, then I highly recommend this one.

Follow Friday

This week's Question:

       Book Selfie! Take a pic with your current read.

 

Well, I don't have my camera with me now, so I can't take a picture with my book. But how about a picture of me writing my upcoming book, (to be released in 2014). I know, it's cheating a little, but I didn't want to have to skip today's Follow Friday.

 

 
 

By the way, I'll let you all know when my debut novel will be published. It's a Victorian Gothic paranormal, so I hope some of you will buy it when it comes out!

The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd

Five years after her young husband’s death, Celia Cassill has moved from one Brooklyn neighborhood to another, but she has not moved on. The owner of a small apartment building, she has chosen her tenants for their ability to respect one another’s privacy. Celia believes in boundaries, solitude, that she has a right to her ghosts. She is determined to live a life at a remove from the chaos and competition of modern life. Everything changes with the arrival of a new tenant, Hope, a dazzling woman of a certain age on the run from her husband’s recent betrayal. When Hope begins a torrid and noisy affair, and another tenant mysteriously disappears, the carefully constructed walls of Celia’s world are tested and the sanctity of her building is shattered—through violence and sex, in turns tender and dark. Ultimately, Celia and her tenants are forced to abandon their separate spaces for a far more intimate one, leading to a surprising conclusion and the promise of genuine joy.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. And in some ways, I suppose, I did, but not enough to make me feel like this is a completely worthwhile read. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

As literary fiction, I didn’t expect car chases and the like, so it is not that which made this a bit of a dull read. The problem, I feel, is that while we get a lot about the protagonist’s inner workings, we still don’t really come to relate to her in any substantial way. Yes, the writing is lovely, with some breathtaking phrases, but it is not enough to keep me reading. My mind wandered away from the pages many times, and it shouldn’t have, not with the kind of emotional depth the author is trying to reach.

There is no real plot, which, as I said, is fine, but there also isn’t a real structure to the novel, which made it feel insubstantial. Actually, the entire thing put me more in mind of a short story collection with an overarching theme than an entire novel.

I don’t want to tell anyone not to read it, since there are some memorable passages, but I do want to lower expectations on the overall book. This one was not one I’d probably read again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

From The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Lloyd

"I felt the radiator in my bedroom, and when its heat did not feel emphatic enough, I pulled my sweater and jeans on, stuck my feet into slippers, and went to check the boiler."

-ARC