Open Diary - posthumouser

List of Books Reviewed

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Asta's Book/Anna's Book in the US by Barbara Vine
Asylum by Patrick Mcgrath
At a Loss for Words by Diane Schoemperlen
Becoming Abigail by Chris Abani
Ben, In the World by Doris Lessing
Coventry by Helen Humphreys
Descartes' Bones by Russell Shorto
Elephant Winter by Kim Echlin
Ex-Cottagers In Love by J.M. Kearns
Guernica by Dave Boling
Hannah's Dream by Diane Hammond
Hotel World by Ali Smith
In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld
Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
Letters Between Us by Linda Rader Overman
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Midwife of The Blue Ridge by Christine Blevins
Mister Sandman by Barbara Gowdy
Months and Seasons by Christopher Meeks
My Father's Paradise by Ariel Sabar
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Quintet by Douglas Arthur Brown
Schooled by Anisha Lakhani
The Bird of Night by Susan Hill
The Blue Fox by Sjon
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton
The Dawning of the Day: A Jerusalem Tale by Haim Sabato
The Disappeared by Kim Echlin
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
The Fifth Son by Doris Lessing
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
The Gate House by Nelson DeMille
The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
The Kings of Innocence by Michael Burns
The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt
The Lost City of Z by David Grann
The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson
The Museum Guard by Howard Norman

The Rabbi's Cat 2 by Joann Sfar

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
The Seamstress by Frances De Peebles

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides
The Whirlpool by Jane Urquhart

Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek
Twice Born by Pauline Gedge
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
What We All Long For by Dionne Brand
Who By Fire by Diana Spechler

FRESH INK BOOKS

Sat, 4 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Please visit my new blog Fresh Ink Books

I've moved my reviews and book news to a new blog. I wasn't able to do much here as I don't understand the gadgetry and no one seemed willing to explain it.

Please come and visit me and tell me what you think. I have more reviews and book giveaways every week. I'm reviewingmore newly released books. I'm only a click away and I miss everyone here and your input.

freshinkbooks.blogspot.com/

THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Fiction, hardcover 562 pgs.

Bond Street Books

This is in many ways a 'boy and his dog story' but I don't think anyone has ever plumbed the emotional depths of dogs in their relatioship to humans in a novel. In doing so of course he has also shown us aspects of human nature we don't see articulated every day either. Wroblewski writing is very good.

A young couple carries on the family business of dog breeding and training in the Wisconsin countryside. Afters years of difficulty Gar and Judy Sawtelle have a beloved baby boy who's perfect but mute. With no medical explanation they resign themselves to teaching him sign language. Edgar is as serious about the dog business as father and grandfather before him. He enjoys perusing the old breeding records and his grandfather's letters about the business. At fourteen he is finally allowed to train the puppies, which he does with hand signals, and he's thrilled. But his father's brother arrives suddenly after years away from the family business and there is an ongoing tension between his father Gar and his uncle Claude that Edgar doesn't like or understand. Tragedy follows and Edgar is the only one who figures out who was responsible. In his frustration of trying to make his mother understand him, Edgar accidently causes a death and decides to run away until things blow over. He spends some weeks wandering with three of his favourite dogs while avoiding people, though he does take up for a while with a man willing to ask no questions of a mute runaway. His loneliness eventually drives him to return home where conflict is inevitable. A killer has to be faced down.

The tension is palpable at this point in the story and the writer knows how to ratchet it up a few notches. Confrontation ensues, first with an old family friend who has suspicions about what's going on. Then with his uncle Claude who has figured out that Edgar knows he's responsible for his father's death and is desperate to hide the evidence. Edgar's emotional state is well laid out for us from the beginning, through his actions and his often furious signing. The author is good at making us feel the boy's frustration when he is not understood or taken serious by adults. But the resolution will still take you by surprise. This is not simply a 'coming of age' story or a mystery/suspense either. This is adult fiction with a powerful emotional impact. As novels go today, it's one of a kind and you won't want to miss it. Four and a half stars out of five.

* If you're like me and don't like to know too much about a story before you read it, avoid reading detailed reviews and don't even read the blurbs on the cover. I call them "blabs" and have trained myself not to read them. Some of them give away too much for my liking.

Okay readers, have you read it? Are you going to? Is it on your wishlist? What are you currently reading? What are you going to read next?

What would you like to see reviewed? If it's on my Coming Reviews list in the sidebar or in my library I would be happy to oblige.

Don't forget to enter my giveaway for Midwife of the Blue Ridge by Christine Blevins which is open worldwide and ends midnight Sunday, September 21,2008 here:

http://freshinkbooks.blogspot.com/

Updated on Friday September 19:

It was announced today that this is Oprah's new Book Club Pick. Reserve your copy at the library before everyone else does.

MIDWIFE OF THE BLUE RIDGE Review and GIVEAWAY

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Review and BOOK GIVEAWAY

Midwife of The Blue Ridge by Christine Blevins

Fiction, Berkley Trade Paperback, 417 pgs.

Released August 2008

Historical fiction demands a great deal of a writer, not just in the way of accuracy of details and believable characters, but also a strong sense of time and place. Christine Blevins achieves this nicely in Midwife of the Blue Ridge. Dominated by a sense of adventure with a strong underlying romance that works its way through the story, it's a rewarding read.

Maggie Duncan, adopted by a midwife after surviving the destruction of her village in 1740s Scotland, finds herself an outcast when the midwife dies. Trained in midwifery and the healing arts, she is still looked upon as a person cursed by the very fact of her survival of that slaughter. Superstition prevents her from practicing her craft and she is considered unmarriageable. She is forced to sell herself into indentured servitude in the New World. She reaches America persued by a drunken brute of a nobleman's son, one Julian Cavendish, who wants to buy her for his own purposes. He is furious when outsmarted and her contract of service is purchased by a decent man, a settler-farmer named Seth Martin. With three children and a pregnant and ailing wife, Maggie is the answer to their prayers. But these are colonial times and life is anything but easy for those trying to tame the primitive wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virgina.

There is the usual mix of compelling characters you'd expect here. Farmers and settlers, trappers and hunters, frontiersmen and frontier widows, soldiers and Indians, and the requisite scoundrels and reprobates. When Maggie develops a strong attachment to Tom Roberts, a tall handsome trapper, she is bound for disappointment. He is a wanderer who appears now and again and lives outdoors and wants no other kind of life. It's not long before raids by Shawnee war parties drive the surrounding settlers, including the Martins and Maggie into the closest fort for protection. After some weeks of that terror in close quarters and deprived living conditions, they return home to find Cavendish in their lives again, legal papers in hand, land-grabbing and forcing people out of their homes. Maggie bargains for leniency for Seth and his family and lets Cavendish take her, hoping to escape later. She will suffer at his hands but make new friends before she ends up in the hands of the Indians and sees how they live and take revenge for the white man's atrocities. Danger has many faces for a young women of the times.

The story is rich with details of plants and medicines, food and clothing, tools and weapons of the period. The author seems to have done her homework in that regard. The Scottish dialect of some of the characters adds appropriate colour. The story is compelling and the book really is hard to put down. There are a couple of scenes of violence that are graphic, including a rape. There's swearing but I cannot imagine frontiersmen and roughnecks all speaking like pastors. For this is not a romance per se as the cover may at first suggest. It is historical fiction and adventure as well. The author gives us all the best and worst of frontier life; the hopes and fears, the hardships and the rewards. It is a job well done. Four stars out of five.

Christine Blevins homepage: http://christineblevins.com/

Thank you to the author for the review copy she sent me.

*******

GIVEAWAY

It looks like Mondays are going to be GIVEAWAY DAY too here at FRESH INK. I simply have no room to keep any more books. So I'm giving away my ARC copy of Midwife of the Blue Ridge by Christine Blevins.

Open worldwide until midnight Sunday, September 21, 2008.

1) To enter go here: http://freshinkbooks.blogspot.com/2008/09/midwife-of-blue-ridge.html

and tell me which book is at the top of your fiction wishlist right now and why you want to read it. (Longer comments are encouraged but not required.)
2) If you blog about this giveaway and put a link back to it, I'll give you a second entry. If you don't have a blog, email 3 friends telling them about this giveaway and copying me at sfuhringer(at) sympatico(dot) ca.

Please leave a contact address if you're entering the giveaway and don't have a blog where I can contact you.

Winner will be announced on Monday, September 22,2008.

WINNER of QUINTET by Douglas Arthur Brown

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Thursdays are going to be GIVEAWAY DAY at FRESH INK.

This week a copy of Quintet by Douglas Arthur Brown is going to:

http://thetometraveller.blogspot.com/

You still have a chance to win The Kings of Innocence by Michael Burns. You have until midnight Wednesday, September 17. Please enter or leave comments at my review of the book on my new lit blog FRESH INK:freshinkbooks.blogspot.com/

All giveaways are open worldwide.
Winner will be announced on Thursday, September 18.

Please leave a contact address if you're entering the giveaway and don't have a blog where I can contact you.
******
Some interesting comments about books in my library from the Quintet giveaway:

Cindi: I would enjoy reading the A Country Doctor's Notebook! by Mikail Bulgakov, I like medicine and other cultures. His story sounds profound and yet funny."

Lauren: Another book you've mentioned that I'd like to read...What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn. It sounds really great and highly interesting. I also love books that take place in another country.

Judy: At LibraryThing your books always come up on my homepage tag watch (literary fiction)and they are more often than not very appealing to me. The book in your library that seems like something I'd like to read is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer.

Rebekah: The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks sounds really intriguing. I enjoy reading books about books or people who have something to do with books."

caite: I must say one that you review on LibraryThing, Death of a Murderer by Rupert Thomson sounds very interesting. Any book described as creepy must be grand!

Icedream: A book that I really would like to read is one that you highly recommend, Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian. I loved his books Midwives and The Double Bind so I am looking forward to reading this new book as well as reading some of his older books.

traci:I've currently got several of your 'recommended' books on my TBR list - The Book Thief by Mark Zarkus, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer. The Potato Peel Pie book is at the top of the list.

geebee: I'd like to read What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn.

Elizabeth: The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall looks quite intriguing and something a bit different from what I would normally choose so that makes it even more appealing.

bermudaonion: I've heard so many good things about The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and I would love to read that!

thetometraveller: I have not heard of Coventry by Helen Humphreys but it's going on my wish list after reading your review. I love historical fiction, especially set in England, and Coventry looks great.

And from the author who was nice enough to leave a comment on my the review :

"Thank you for posting my book "Quintet" on your website. Your readers are welcome to visit my website: douglasarthurbrown.ca and post questions.
Sincerely, "

Douglas Arthur Brown

Thank you to every one of the 14 people who entered and for your great comments. Please enter again or leave comments, book recommendations, questions, or opinions-good, bad, or otherwise.