Introverted Reader

The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig: Book Review

Arabella Dempsey has just seen all her hopes dashed. She's been a companion to her aunt since she was a child and fully expected to inherit from her. She realizes that isn't going to happen when her aunt marries a much younger man--the very man that Arabella has been fantasizing about. Does it get any crueler? But Arabella is nothing if not determined and she determines to make her own way in the world and goes to work as a teacher in an all-girls school. Her first day there she literally bumps into everyone's favorite bumbling idiot, Reginald Fitzhugh. You might know him as Turnip. Turnip because he has the brains of one. But Turnip has a big heart and a younger sister and a secret message in a Christmas pudding, and it all adds up to one very fun book. I confess that I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to Turnip in the other books, but I did love the big doof in this book. He's handsome, and not the brightest crayon, but he has a gigantic heart. He's wrapped around his younger sister's finger, he's rich but doesn't even think about class as a general rule. Everything he's thinking moves across his face, and he's not afraid to defend a lady's honor. Heck, he's willing to play an even bigger idiot and thus put his life on the line for his country! A gentleman indeed! The action in this book takes place in between The Seduction of the Crimson Rose and The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. Well, it actually overlaps with Night Jasmine. It was interesting to see some of those events from a different perspective. Oh, and another thing. Jane Austen as a character. Need I say more? I always read Lauren Willig's books…

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin: Book Review

Children are missing from Cambridge, the town's Jews have been blamed, and King Henry II is receiving less revenue while the Jews are in hiding. Clearly something must be done. Enter Adelia Aguilar. She has been trained at the world-renowned and forward-thinking school of medicine in Salerno, Italy. Her specialty? Corpses. She is a mistress of the art of death and the dead "speak" to her. She's called in to examine the body of the one child who has been found and, along with her friends, try to find the killer. This was a page-turner for me, mostly because of Adelia. She feels completely real. She's super-intelligent but hopeless in society. She's great with her patients but clueless as to how to interact with them outside the examining room. She's a feminist in a time before the word was dreamed of. She tries to hold herself aloof from everyone, but her heart's too big for that and she ends up caring in spite of herself. She feels like someone I would like to know in real life. The other characters are a great supporting cast. For the most part, they're reasonably well-rounded and I wound up caring about them too. My favorite was the little urchin, Ulff. The mystery was solid. I did guess part of it, but not the whole thing. I did end up being very surprised by the end. One thing that did bother me, and I'm not quite sure who to "blame" for this, is that this book takes place around the time that The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett ended, but this one felt like it could have been centuries later. Maybe it was just me, but Follett's England under Henry II was a brutal, hopeless, scary place, and Franklin's England at the…

Introverted Reader Features

Character Connection: Turnip Fitzhugh

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.I just finished reading The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig. I love these books but haven't done a Character Connection because my favorite characters have been earlier in the series. But now I can write about Reginald "Turnip" Fitzhugh. Turnip has money, he's gorgeous, but he's also dumb as a-- well, you know. The nickname. I confess that I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to Turnip in the other books, but I did love the big doof in this book. He has horrendous taste in waistcoats and cravats. He might wear them well, but he's a little too fascinated by the Pink Carnation; pink carnations are all over his clothes. In fact, some people--who don't know him well enough to know that no one can keep up an idiotic front like his indefinitely--wonder if he might actually be the Pink Carnation. Britain's league of spies uses that to their favor though, and Turnip good-naturedly…

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January 6, 2011

At Home by Bill Bryson: Book Review

We take so much in our daily lives for granted. Bill Bryson looked around his house one day, realized how little he knew about the everyday objects surrounding him, and, being Bill Bryson, decided to research and write a book about them. I read this slowly as my before-bed book, and I'm not sure that was always a good idea. Reading about how ingenious rats are as I hear the pitter-pat of little rodent feet in my attic space is not necessarily a good idea. But at least now I know who invented the traps my husband set out! This book is hard to describe. It's roughly arranged by room, but my gosh, it travels around on some tangents. I'm not complaining. It all flowed together naturally and I only questioned how I had gotten to one subject if I really stopped to think about a particular chapter title. "The nursery" goes from childbirth to child labor to poor house conditions to the repression of wealthy children to conditions at boarding schools. But I promise you it all flows together, and it's all interesting in the way that only Bill Bryson can pull off. I am not a huge fan of non-fiction, so I don't know that I could really have enjoyed this as much if I had read it straight through with no breaks, but as an in-between book, I really enjoyed it. I'm now full of trivia about all kinds of things that could even remotely be considered to have anything to do with private life. They always say that truth is stranger than fiction. Bryson proves it. I read some of the more outrageous tidbits to my husband, who pretty much refuses to believe that they're true. But I don't question Bryson's research, so I believe him…

The Gendarme by Mark Mustian: Book Review

Emmett Conn is 92 years old and he has started having seizures and disturbing dreams/flashbacks. His early years are a mystery to him anyway. He awoke in a British hospital in WWI, a Turkish soldier mistakenly picked up after he was severely wounded. That's as far back as he can remember. But now in his dreams he seems to be re-living a past where he was a soldier in charge of a group of Armenian people in what later came to be known as the Armenian genocide. Are these real memories? And what of the beautiful girl with different-colored eyes? Was she real and did he love her? I feel like this is a very literary book and I should have something very smart and literary to say, but that's just not my style. I can only tell you what I liked and didn't like. I had never even heard of the Armenian genocide until sometime in the past year or two. It was actually a passing reference on GoodReads. I left it at that. I'm disappointed in myself. I'll be the first to spout off with how we have to remember the Holocaust so we don't repeat history, but I didn't bother to at least look at Wikipedia and see what happened to the Armenians. And they are in danger of being forgotten. I saw this author (who is of Armenian descent) speak at the Decatur Book Festival, and he said that Hitler, only about 20 years after all this happened, even said something like, "Who even remembers the Armenians?" Shameful. Anyway. This book is told from an aggressor's point of view. He personally didn't feel strongly one way or the other about the Armenians, he just wanted to join the army and fight in WWI. Before that could…

Bookish Miscellany

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. Read: I finally finished Mary, Called Magdalene by Margaret George on Sunday. I also knocked out a nice little Christmas book my mom gave me, The Christmas Cross, by Max Lucado. I also read The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig. I would call these books a guilty pleasure, but I can't feel guilty about reading something that has me grinning like an idiot the whole way through! Currently Reading: I had The Roar by Emma Clayton in hand, but I'm pretty sure it's dystopian and I have to be in the right mood for that. I went completely opposite and decided to start Scones and Sensibility by Lindsay Eland instead. What are you reading this week? I have an affiliate relationship with IndieBound, Book Depository, and Better World Books and will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

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January 3, 2011

Introverted Reader Features

My Dewey Decimal Challenge

I've been looking for a simple, general non-fiction challenge. I can't find one, so I decided to host my own. I am very much a fiction reader, but I did pick up several non-fiction books last year and I mostly enjoyed them. I need a little push to keep reading them, and I thought some of you might as well. So here's my Dewey Decimal Challenge. Read any non-fiction book(s), adult or young adult. That's it. You can choose anything. Poetry? Yes. Memoirs? Yes. History? Yes. Travel? Yes. You get the idea? Absolutely anything that is classified as non-fiction counts for this challenge. I always like levels in my challenges, so here are mine: Dilettante--Read 1 non-fiction book. Explorer--Read 2 Seeker--Read 3 Master--Read 4 This challenge will last from January 1 to December 31, 2011. You can sign up anytime throughout the year. I am not limiting the challenge to bloggers. You can also link to a review you wrote on another site, such as GoodReads or LibraryThing. My Personal Progress: I'm shooting for the Master level. I'll track my progress right here. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman by Alice Steinbach Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, translated by Stuart Woolf Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John M. Barry Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand The Lost City of Z by David Grann, read by Mark Deakins 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff Travels With Charley: In Search of Americ by John Steinbeck The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, read by the author…

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January 1, 2011

Bookish Miscellany

2010 Reading Roundup

It's the end of 2010 already! It seems like I just wrote this kind of post for 2009! I finished up with a grand total of 111 books read (although I'm hoping to finish up one today). According to GoodReads, that's 37,273 pages. That sounded impressive until I saw that I read 11,000 more in 2009! What can I say? Blogging took up a [...]

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December 31, 2010

Introverted Reader Features

Judy Plum: Character Connection

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday. With a name like Judy Plum, you know you have stumbled on a great character. A character with character, let's say. Judy is obviously not the main character in L. M. Montgomery's Pat of Silver Bush, but she is the heart of the book and the Gardiner family. I suppose she would technically be the maid, but she's really an adopted member of the family. Originally from Ireland, she traveled around a bit with her brother before settling in Prince Edward Island in Canada. Her Irish brogue is still thick, as evidenced by statements like, "'Tis hardly a civil question that, but ye're too young to know it. I do be as old as me tongue and a liddle older than me teeth. Marrying's a trouble and not marrying's a trouble and I sticks to the trouble I knows." Judy obviously has a knack for laying out maxims in unusual ways. Her Irishness also means that she…

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December 30, 2010

The Outer Banks House by Diann Ducharme: Book Review

Abby Sinclair is the neglected daughter of a plantation owner. Three years after the end of the Civil War, she is still mourning the loss of her uncle and her family is still adjusting to the loss of their slaves. When her father decides to move the whole family out to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for the summer, Abby is excited to see the ocean for the first time. Something about the wildness of the ocean stirs up a wildness that had almost been lost in herself. And then she meets "Banker" Benjamin Whimble, a dirty, uneducated young man who nevertheless has something to teach her. I loved the descriptions of the Outer Banks in the 1860s. It's hard to think of them as they are now, crowded with houses up to the water's edge in places, and read about how no one built close to the water in this time period because of the harshness of the storms. At the very beginning, Abby runs clear across Nags Head from the sound to the ocean, finding nothing but sand on the way. I'm thinking about the traffic, outlet malls and shops and restaurants, and the Wright Brothers Memorial that she would meet today. "Progress" is of course inevitable, but reading something like this makes me wonder if it's worth the cost. I liked watching Abby come into her own. The loss of her uncle, who was more truly her father than her father is, has left her reeling. She's withdrawn and bookish, and she's starting to be pushed around a little too much by her parents. She slowly and believably starts to regain her old confidence and to even make some surprising decisions for herself. I liked Benjamin a lot. He sees the world clearly through his intense…