Posts

, , , ,

170. The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Heather Bohart

Author:   Jennifer Ryan

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

371 pages, published February 14, 2017

Reading Format:  E-Book on Overdrive

 

Summary

The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir is set during the early days of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet II in the bucolic village of Chilbury, England.  With many of the village men off to war, the ladies who remain in the village decide to ‘carry on singing’ as part of the “The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir.”  As they do, the war rages around them as Dunkirk is evacuated and the German drop bombs on their village.  The ladies suffer more than their share of loss.  However, they keep hope alive and life goes on with romances, intrigue and a bizarre and hilarious switched at birth story.

 

Quotes 

“Human nature defeats me sometimes, how greed and spite can lurk so divisively around the utmost courage and sacrifice.”

 

“I took a deep breath of the syrupy sweetness of summer, suffused with bees and birds, and I thought to myself how beautiful this world can be. How lucky we are to be here, to be part of it, for however long we have.”

 

“And I realized that this is what it’s like to be an adult, learning to pick from a lot of bad choices and do the best you can with that dreadful compromise. Learning to smile, to put your best foot forward, when the world around you seems to have collapsed in its entirety, become a place of isolation, a sepia photograph of its former illusion.”

 

 

“…we spoke about dying. [Prim] told me how she’d nearly died of malaria. She said that she didn’t mind the thought of death. That realizing you’re going to die actually makes life better as it’s only then that you decide to live the life you really want to live.”

 

Then I looked out onto the horizon myself and realized that loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening. How resilient human beings are that we can learn slowly to carry on when we are left all alone, left to fill the void as best we can. Or disappear into it.”

 

“If we don’t think about our death until we die, how can we decide how we want to live?”

 

My Take

During my thousand book quest, I have read a lot of books that take place during World War II (The Nightingale, The Girl You Left Behind, Life After Life, Going Solo, A God in Ruins, The End of the Affair, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, The Zookeeper’s Wife ) and for the most part, I have really enjoyed them.  The world at war, with the potential of a complete takeover by the Nazis, automatically raises the stakes in any book.  In a similar fashion to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir gives us the perspective of the British home front when invasion by the Germans felt imminent.  Jennifer Ryan is a skilled writer, creating a world that is easy to inhabit and characters that you want to get to know better.

/by
, , , ,

153. The Wish Granter

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   C. J. Redwine

Genre:  Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy

432 pages, published February 14, 2017

Reading Format:  e-Book on Overdrive

 

Summary

The Wish Granter is a romantic, action-packed young adult fantasy novel loosely based on the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.  It centers on the story of Ari Glavan, who along with her brother Thad, are the bastard twins of Súndraille’s king.  Ari must take on the Wish Granter Alistair Teague, an evil fae, to save her brother’s soul.  Thad, who has traded his soul to save his people, sits on the throne of a kingdom whose streets are suddenly overrun with violence he can’t stop.  Growing up on the edges of society, Ari never wanted to be a proper princess and rebels against the royal expectations of her.  In her attempt to best Teague, Ari recruits Sebastian Vaughn, her brother’s new weapons master, to teach her how to fight.  With their souls and the kingdom on the line, it all comes down to an epic battle between Ari and Sebastian against the powerful Wish Granter.

 

Quotes

“Sometimes having courage means the hardest tasks fall onto your shoulders, and those leave the biggest scars.”

 

“There’s a restless, pent-up power in the sea, and you know if it ever decided to stop respecting its boundaries, it could destroy you. But it does respect its boundaries. It stays where it should, so its power feels safe. When you stand here, surrounded by mystery and beauty and power, you feel safe.”

 

“Coin didn’t protect you. It didn’t save you from your secrets. Only absolute power did that.”

  

My Take

I can’t remember how I found this book.  I think I was traveling and was scanning Overdrive for available books.  The Wish Granter was available for check out, had good reviews and I hadn’t read many fantasy books since starting my quest, so I decided to give it a read.  It was fine, but unlike the Twilight and Hunger Games books, I think I am too old for this series.  Maybe if I read while I was a teenager I would have enjoyed it more.  Recommended for the under 15 set.  Adults should find something better.

/by
, , ,

134. His Bloody Project

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   

Author:   Graeme Macrae Burnet

Genre:  Fiction, Crime

280 pages, published November 5, 2015

Reading Format:  E-Book on Overdrive

 

Summary

A brutal triple murder in a remote Scottish farming community in 1869 leads to the arrest of seventeen-year-old Roderick “Roddy” Macrae.  While there is no question that Macrae committed this terrible crime, the authorities are puzzled as to why such a shy and intelligent boy would go down this bloody path?  Presented as a collection of documents discovered by the author, His Bloody Project opens with a series of police statements taken from the villagers of Culdie, Rossshire. They offer conflicting impressions of the accused; one interviewee recalls Macrae as a gentle and quiet child, while another details him as evil and wicked.  Among the papers is Roddy’s own memoirs, where he outlines the series of events leading up to the murder in eloquent and affectless prose.  The book also contains medical reports, psychological evaluations, a courtroom transcript from the trial, and other documents that throw both Macrae’s motive and his sanity into question.

 

Quotes

“One man can no more see into the mind of another than he can see inside a stone…”

 

“These unfortunates are distinguished by the prevalence of malicious feelings, which often arise at the most trivial provocation. They see enmity where none exists and indulge themselves in great fantasies of revenge and mischief; fantasies which they are then powerless to resist acting upon.”

 

My Take

I decided to read His Bloody Project after seeing that it was a Man Booker Prize Nominee in 2016.  The format of the book as a collection of documents surrounding a triple murder, investigation and trial in 17th Century Scotland made for a fascinating read, especially as it revealed details of the different social classes of the time.  After finishing it, I still had some questions about what exactly happened, but I think that is the point of the book.  Life is often messy and incomprehensible.  Although we would like to put people and events into neat little boxes, it is sometimes impossible to do that and we have to live with the ambiguity.

 

/by
, , , , ,

59. Red Rising

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Pierce Brown

Genre:  Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopia

382 pages, published January 28, 2014

Reading Format:  E-Book on Overdrive

Summary 

The dystopian future world of Red Rising is a place where people are strictly segregated by class and color.  Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest and relegated to a life underground working in the dangerous mines of Mars.  Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.  Soon Darrow discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago and that vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet.  He and all Reds are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.  When Darrow’s wife Eo is executed, he is chosen by a group of rebels to undergo a physical transformation that will turn him into a member of the Gold ruling caste.  His body successfully altered, Darrow’s challenge is just beginning.  He is thrown into a battle among young Golds to see who will emerge as the victor.

 

Quotes

“I live for the dream that my children will be born free.  That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.’  ‘I live for you,’ I say sadly.  She kisses my cheek.  ‘Then you must live for more.”

 

“Funny how a single word can change everything in your life.”

“It is not funny at all.  Steel is power.  Money is power.  But of all the things in all the worlds, words are power.”

 

“You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is.  You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going.  I do.”

 

“The measure of a man is what he does when he has power.”

 

“The world is soundless. We cannot hear, but a pack of wolves does not need words to know that it is time to hunt.”

 

“The fleas would jump and jump to heights unknown. Then a man came along and upturned a glass jar over the fleas. The fleas jumped and hit the top of the jar and could go no farther.  Then the man removed the jar and yet the fleas did not jump higher than they had grown accustomed, because they believed there to still be a glass ceiling.”

 

“Society has three stages:  Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence.  The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence.”

 

Read more

/by
, , ,

58. Malice at the Palace

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Rhys Bowen

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Mystery

304 pages, published August 4, 2015

Reading Format:  E-Book on Overdrive

Summary 

Malice at the Palace follows the travails of Lady Georgiana Rannoch, a temporarily broke girl about London in the 1930’s who is thirty-fifth in line for the British throne. While her beloved Darcy is off on a mysterious mission, Georgiana receives a new assignment from the Queen.  The King’s youngest son George is to wed Princess Marina of Greece and Georgiana is to be her companion at the supposedly haunted Kensington Palace.  Things get complicated when Georgiana searches the Palace for a supposed ghost only to encounter an actual dead person, a society beauty said to have been one of Prince George’s mistresses.  After Darcy turns up, the investigation brings Georgiana and Darcy precariously close to the prince himself.

Read more

/by