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: What Has Been Written…

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop2 Comments

book-blogger-hop-finalToday’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Do you ever go back to older posts and change things?

Basically, no.  I only rarely look back at older posts, and when I do it’s to read, not revise.  If I notice a clear typo, I might correct that (if it’s a moment when I have time and easy means to do so!) but that’s really just changing it to what my original intent was.  I don’t change actual content.

I sometimes read a post and think I’d write it differently now…but while this is a chronicle of reading, within that category it is a bit journal-like, and I’m nearly compulsive about not changing journals at a later time (because then it’s not an accurate record of its original time!)

Once in a while I’ll do a Classic Post, putting an old review up again, but I don’t generally change things even then.  I think I’ve occasionally taken something out, if  a paragraph was really only relevant at the time (maybe it was more about blog business than the actual book, for example).  I add things, but only as an introduction before the post proper.  So what I have written, I have written!

Do you make revisions on old posts?  Or are they a kind of historical record that you leave intact?

Book Reviews: Amos Fortune and The Slave Dancer

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews1 Comment

I’m hitting 2018 running with the Newbery Medal winners!  I didn’t plan to pair these two when I read them, but they turned out to be particularly interesting when set next to each other.

Amos Fortune: Free Man by Elizabeth Yates

Amos is an African prince, stolen with most of his tribe as a young man, packed onto a ship and taken to America to be a slave.  He lives through most of the 1700s, working and learning, passing through masters until achieving his freedom, marrying and prospering in a trade.

This was an odd book about slavery because, despite being the central theme, it felt strangely minor to the plot.  The capture at the beginning is dramatic, and we see how Amos’ (not named that yet) tribesmen lose themselves through the horrible Middle Passage, but the details are somewhat slight.  In America, Amos is immediately bought by a Quaker who doesn’t believe in slavery.  The understanding, from the beginning, is always that the master will free Amos, whenever Amos feels ready to be independent.  That’s…not really how slavery usually works.  This actually doesn’t work out because the master dies too soon, but Amos is sold to another man with much the same attitude, who does eventually arrange for Amos to be freed. Continue reading “Book Reviews: Amos Fortune and The Slave Dancer” →

Blog Hop: Bending Covers????

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop5 Comments

book-blogger-hop-finalToday’s Book Blogger Hop question is: When reading a mass paperback book, many people fold the cover back, as if they were reading a magazine. Doing this will eventually create creases in the spine. How do you feel about this common bookish habit?

I may have actually shuddered when I read this.  I just…the poor cover!!  I’m trying not to judge anyone who does this, truly…but I’m not sure I’ve ever done this.  I’m not actually worried about creases in the spine.  I’d be more worried about bending the book out of shape and damaging the cover–either by bending it so it won’t lie flat, or actually ripping the cover off because of the wear.

Although.  The emphasis on “mass market paperback” seems to suggest these are very cheap books, and perhaps the people reading them in this way view them as a disposable, one-use-only commodity.  There we differ, because I don’t really view any book that way.  Most books I read are from the library, so they’re not even mine and, by definition, are expected to hold up for many reads.  And I only buy my books if I plan to keep them for rereading.

Some of my books have cracked spines (notably, Maskerade by Terry Pratchett, which I swear cracked on my favorite page, one of OG’s maniacal notes) and I love them anyway and so far they’ve all held up reasonably well.  But I try to treat my books with care.

Should I even ask if anyone out there folds their covers back…? 😉

Book Review: The Feminine Mystique

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews2 Comments

We’re less than a month into 2018, and I already have a contender for best nonfiction book of the year: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.  And it will probably bring back my end of the year category, “I can’t believe I waited until this year to read this book.”  I have, after all, been hearing about it for…well, ever since I was old enough for my mom to start talking about it, so I’d have to guess early teens.  I probably should have read it sooner–or maybe now was the perfect time, for it to feel scarily relevant.

In 1963, fifty-five years ago, Betty Friedan wrote her ground-breaking book about “the problem that has no name,” why so many educated, intelligent housewives with good husbands and beloved children still felt deeply unhappy.  She explores the cultural pressures forcing women to stay in the home–convincing them that’s the best and most noble place to be–and why this is having terrible outcomes.  She looks at relevant history, from the suffragettes to Freud, and gets in-depth about the cultural norms of her time and how we got there.

It’s hard to believe that most of it is anything I didn’t know on some level before–and yet it still felt mind-blowing.  It’s like a painting you’ve been looking at forever, then moving two steps to the right and seeing a whole new pattern emerge from the changed angle.  Friedan really did bring new ideas (for me, anyway) about the pattern of women’s place in society, from the suffragettes of the twenties, to the “working girl” of the thirties, to Rosie the Riveter in WWII, and then, somehow, swinging backwards to June Cleaver in the home in the fifties.  Those were dots I’m not sure I ever put together, and it puts a different shape on the twentieth century for me. Continue reading “Book Review: The Feminine Mystique” →

Blog Hop: Coming Up in 2018

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop2 Comments

book-blogger-hop-finalToday’s Book Blogger Hop question is: What upcoming titles are looking forward to reading in 2018?

Well, I wrote about this in my end of the year review, and I’m excited about a lot of books coming out from my writer friends.  And just the other day, I heard about another very exciting book coming out…Tempests and Slaughter by Tamora Pierce, the long (looooong) awaited first book of the Numair Chronicles, which has been delayed so many times I gave up hoping about it!

Seriously, this has been pushed back year by year since 2013.  But Goodreads has a very near date, and I hear substantiated rumors that review copies are being sent out.  We finally, finally, finally get another Tortall story!  Super exciting book to look forward to–and I am #6 in line on the library’s hold list. 😀