Author: cherylmahoney

I'm a book review blogger and writer. I have published four novels, The Wanderers; The Storyteller and Her Sisters; and The People the Fairies Forget; and The Lioness and the Spellspinners. All can be found on Amazon as an ebook and paperback. In my day job, I'm a Marketing Specialist. Find me on Twitter (@MarvelousTales) and GoodReads (MarvelousTales).

Blog Hop: Around the Blogosphere

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop4 Comments

book blogger hopThis week’s Book Blogger Hop question is more about blogging than reading: What weekly memes do you follow on a regular basis?

To begin, a vocabulary note–as far as I can tell “meme” has two meanings (non-technical ones, anyway).  First, a photo/comic/video/random joke that goes floating around the internet, and if that’s what’s meant, I’d have to just say George Takei and leave it at that.  But I’m pretty sure the second definition is meant, as in a regular blogging event where bloggers all post on the same topic on the same day of the week, and share the posts on a hosting site.  So going by that definition…

There’s the Friday Blogger Hop, obviously, which provides me some fun ideas of different book or blogging topics to write about.

The Saturday Snapshot goes up most Saturday mornings, a meme focused on sharing a photograph (or several).  This one isn’t about books, though it seems like a lot of book bloggers participate, and I usually try to give my photos a literary spin.

What Are You Reading? is a very aptly-named meme inviting bloggers to share their reading plans for the coming week(s).  I usually post for this one once or twice a month.  Officially it’s supposed to be a Monday meme, but I post on Sunday, since my personal blogging schedule calls for a review Monday, and I don’t want to flood people with two posts in one day (it would be a small flood, I guess…but you know what I mean).

Hmm…my memes seem to be rather centered around the weekend, aren’t they?  I hadn’t thought of that before.

Your turn!  What are your favorite memes?  Any I should check out?

Dark and Grim, Indeed

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews6 Comments

Tale Dark and GrimmI think my reasons for reading A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz should be fairly self-evident in the title…Brothers Grimm-inspired, and dark and spooky for Readers Imbibing Peril!

The premise is very clever, promising to tell the true story of Hansel and Gretel, and then setting off through several Grimm fairy tales.  When Hansel and Gretel’s father learns that his faithful servant, previously turned to stone in his service, can be restored if he chops his children’s heads off…he goes ahead and does it.  Hansel and Gretel are restored to life, but (quite understandably) decide it’s time to run away from home.  They encounter the wicked witch with her candy house, but also go on adventures through other fairy tales, struggling against dangerous magic and frightening or fantastically irresponsible adults.

With the exception of the original Hansel and Gretel story, these are not the best-known Grimm fairy tales, like Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella.  I recognized most of the stories, but I’ve read a good bit of the original Grimms…and considering my audience here, you might recognize them too!

There’s definitely constant excitement in this novel, with a new twist and villain at every turn.  It actually didn’t feel as episodic as you might expect, though.  With the constant thread of Hansel and Gretel as the main characters, the different tales wove together surprisingly well.  There’s also an amusing narrator who occasionally stops the action to make remarks to the reader about the story.  I might have liked a little more subtlety in weaving the narrator into the story…but that’s a choice, and once I got used to the narrator, the device worked well.

For all that’s good here, I do have one BIG reservation–I really don’t know who the target audience is meant to be.  The style of the writing is clearly juvenile.  There’s a simplicity to the language, Hansel and Gretel seem to be about 10 or 12, and there’s just a very strong juvenile feel to the book.  However–there is a LOT of blood.

I feel a little strange pointing that out, because the narrator points it out too, in a very sarcastic, tongue in cheek kind of way.  Early on, he keeps advising that little kids should be kept out of the room because they’ll be disturbed by upcoming sections.  Those remarks read like jokes…but they’re true!  The blood and the violence are told in the matter-of-fact style of the original Brothers Grimm, and there’s probably nothing here that wasn’t there…which still leaves you with blood, beheadings, dismemberment, two (unrelated) severed fingers, and all in all quite a bit of nastiness.

As far as I can tell from Gidwitz’s website, the blood is supposed to be a large part of the appeal.  All the same, I haven’t the slightest doubt that if I had read this when I was actually the target age suggested by the writing style, I would have been thoroughly disturbed.  There’s a bit in here about skinning a monster that I find slightly disturbing now.  Conclusion: although I liked aspects of this, apparently I’m not the target reader.

So…I guess the natural reader is either a kid who doesn’t mind gore (and I’m sure there are ones less squeamish than I was), or an adult who doesn’t mind a simplistic writing style.  If you pick it up, there’s plenty that’s well-done, but be warned that this really is inspired by the Brothers Grimm, not Walt Disney!

Author’s Site: http://www.adamgidwitz.com/

Other reviews:
Here There Be Books
Rex Robot Reviews
The Mountains of Instead
Anyone else?

Buy it here: A Tale Dark and Grimm

Strangers on a Train

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews5 Comments

I’ve been continuing my Hitchcock viewing for Readers Imbibing Peril, and I’m still enjoying the Master of Suspense.  I had a bit of a Hitchcock phase in college (the library had lots of his movies available) and most of the movies I haven’t seen since then.  I’ve been having a good time now rewatching favorites I haven’t seen in years–like Strangers on a Train.

This is a very direct and accurate title: two strangers meet on a train, tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and the wealthy and idle Bruno Antony (Robert Walker).  Bruno has all sorts of wild theories, and he proposes one to Guy: a criss-cross murder.  Guy wants to get rid of his philandering, divorce-refusing wife, Miriam; Bruno wants to get rid of his father.  Neither can commit the murder because the motive makes them the obvious suspect–so why not commit each other’s murder?  Guy laughs the idea off…until Bruno shows up at his door to tell him that Miriam is dead, and now he expects Guy to fulfill  his half of the agreement.

I didn’t plan it, but this turned out to be a fascinating one to watch right after Rope (review here).  It was made a few years later, and I can see some of the same themes.  Also, if you remember weak-willed and murderous Philip from Rope, the same actor played the very different Guy Haines.  I was impressed, actually, because Philip and Guy look exactly the same, and yet they felt like very different people.  I think it was a difference that was on the level of mannerisms, bearing, speech patterns and so on.  Guy has his foolish and weak-willed moments, but on the whole he’s confident and morally-upright…although, like Philip, he winds up manipulated by a seriously deranged man.

Hitchcock does wonderful things with Bruno.  He’s not a moustache-twirling villain or a big hulking monster.  He’s smiling, affable, pleasant-spoken and even charming…but with a little edge of weirdness.  To quote Mr. Shakespeare, “you can smile and smile and be a villain,” and Hitchcock takes this smiling psychopath and presents him as a terrifying specter, haunting first Miriam and then Guy.

We follow Bruno as he follows Miriam to an amusement park, and it becomes a long tense scene set against a backdrop of revelry, because we know what has to be coming.  One of my favorite moments is when Miriam and two “friends” take a boat into the Tunnel of Love.  Bruno follows in another boat, and for a space we only see their silhouettes as shadows against the wall–and from their separate boats, Bruno’s shadow stalks and overtakes Miriam’s.  Bruno’s amusement park boat, by the way, is named Pluto, the God of the Underworld.  Those little touches are why I love Hitchcock so much.

As Bruno gets more intent on his demands of Guy, there are other lovely moments that are so simple but so creepy.  At one point, Guy is sitting on the sidelines of a tennis match, and we see the crowd–every head turning in unison with the progress of the match, except right in the center there’s Bruno, eyes locked on Guy.

I mentioned some of the themes seemed to be carrying over from Rope, and I was especially thinking of the contrast between murder in theory and murder in actuality.  Guy’s new girlfriend has a younger sister who is lovely and sweet and fascinated by grisly murders.  We again have a character who thinks murder is quite thrilling in theory–but is horrified when confronted with the reality.  The insane characters, the Brunos and the Brandons, are the ones who make no distinction–who don’t draw a line between saying you could strangle someone, and actually doing it.

My one criticism of the movie is that it ends too quickly (a Hitchcock trademark) and more importantly, too easily.  I like happy endings, but I don’t quite believe that it all would have worked out so neatly and so simply…

Still, it was another excellent walk through the shadows with the Master of Suspense.

Other reviews:
Derek Winnert
Folding Seats
Collider
Anyone else?

Buy it here: Strangers on a Train

Saturday Snapshot: Quasimodo’s View of Paris

On By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot13 Comments

I’ve been reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo this week, so naturally I have the cathedral on the brain.  I already shared some photos in a previous Saturday Snapshot, though, so I had to come up with a new angle…like the view.

Notre Dame Views (2)The Seine and the Eiffel Tower, from one of Notre Dame’s towers.  I got lots of pictures of the Eiffel Tower and walked under it–I didn’t go up in it, because I was already planning to get the view from Notre Dame.

Notre Dame Views (3)This may look like a complete muddle of rooftops, but look for the gold statues near the center, with the blue dome behind them.  That’s the Opera Garnier, and what photography doesn’t manage to capture is how gloriously those statues seem to shine, even from a distance, even on a cloudy day.

Notre Dame Views (1)And this is not a view from the towers, but it is on a street a block away…  I wonder what Victor Hugo would think?

Visit West Metro Mommy for more Saturday Snapshots.  Have a great weekend!

Blog Hop: Favorite Genre(s)

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop4 Comments

book blogger hopThis week’s Book Blogger Hop question: What is your favorite genre? List two of your favorite books in that genre.

Well…I’m pretty sure you all already know the answer to that question!  So to make this more interesting, I’m going to list favorite genreS, and try to find a couple of favorite books in those genres that I may not have mentioned frequently before…

Fantasy: The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint and A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones

Science Fiction: A Fighting Man of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Enchantress from the Stars by Sylvia Engdahl–and also Star Trek: First Frontier by Diane Carey and Dr. James I. Kirkland and Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn

Historical Fiction: Bloody Jack series by L. A. Meyer and The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig

Classics: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Whew, it’s harder than I expected to think of third and fourth favorite books–I’m so used to going to the top two for this sort of question!

Your turn: what’s your favorite genre and favorite book within it?  Don’t feel obliged to come up with your third favorite if you’d rather just share #1!