Tag: Books

Friday Face-Off: An Old World

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations2 Comments

FFO.jpg

Time again for the Friday Face-Off meme, created by Books by Proxy, with weekly topics hosted by Lynn’s Book Blog.  The idea is to put up different covers for one book, and select a favorite.

This week’s theme is: “Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.” – A cover with abandoned building/s

I’m going to fudge a little bit here, because the book that immediately came to mind is The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis, with the fantastic and fascinating old world of the White Queen.  There’s something about the ancient ruins of the dying world that grabbed me–but apparently not cover artists!   By contrast, I don’t even remember the flying horse that shows up on a good half of the covers out there…

This is the only cover I could find with anything at all of the White Queen’s ruined palace, and frankly it doesn’t look remotely the way I pictured it.  I was seeing more marble and sandstone, and smoother, grander structures than this.  More ancient Rome, less Middle Ages.

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Book and Movie Review: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Young Adult2 Comments

As part of my goal to read more love stories in 2019, I decided to give To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han a chance.  I really enjoyed the movie version, so I figured it was worth trying the book–even though I wasn’t really a fan of The Summer I Turned Pretty, also by Jenny Han.  Well.  It turned out this was one of the rare times when the movie really was better than the book.

The fundamental premise of both the book and the movie is slightly absurd–teenager Lara Jean writes love letters to her crushes, not to send them, but just to put her feelings into words.  She writes them, addresses them, and then puts them away to save.  But then her letters get mailed by mistake–including the one to Josh, her sister’s (very recently) ex-boyfriend.  In a panic to hide her feelings for Josh, Lara Jean tries to convince him that she’s really in love with Peter, one of her other letter recipients.  Peter just broke up with his long-time girlfriend, and suggests that he and Lara Jean pretend to date, to make his ex jealous and to throw Josh off the track.

Like I said, it’s kind of absurd, but worth going along with.  At least in the movie, which had a lot I liked.  It’s a cute, funny teenage romantic comedy, with a silly premise but believable and likable characters.  I like that it has a lot of diversity–Lara Jean and her two sisters are biracial, Korean and Caucasian; besides their parents’ interracial relationship, none of the guys she crushes on are Asian.  Mostly white, one is African-American (and gay).  But what I liked best was that Lara Jean used her words, a lot.

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Top Ten “Tuesday” – Bookish Couples

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations3 Comments

I love Top Ten Tuesday and rarely post for it–but this seemed like a perfect topic for Valentine’s Day!  Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, with a new topic each Tuesday.  This week, it’s romance.

I wandered through my bookshelves, and pulled out a stack with my favorite romances in them–with a few bonus bromances and womances.  In no particular order…

1) The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig
Arabella and Turnip – I’ve written at length about these delightfully unconventional romantic leads, who are overlooked by everyone but each other.

2) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jane and Mr. Rochester – I know he has some serious problems…but Bronte punishes him so thoroughly and humbles him so completely that by the end of the book I really believe their romance.  And the last section is rather adorable.

3) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Catherine Morland and Mr. Tilney – Mr. Darcy is the famous Austen hero, but I ❤ Mr. Tilney instead.  A smiling man who reads Gothic novels and knows his muslins–what’s not to love?

4) Enchantress from the Stars by Silvia Louise Engdahl
Elana and Georyn – The only bittersweet ending on my list, a beautiful love story about two people from, literally, different worlds, who change each other forever but can’t ever be together.

5) The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer:
Well, everyone – This quartet has four wonderful, engrossing love stories.  Cinder and Prince Kai were a hair behind the others; Scarlet and Wolf were as marvelous as Winter and Jacin; and my favorites were Cress and Thorne.  I have a soft spot for charming rogues with good hearts.

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Friday Face-Off: Belated Clergy

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations2 Comments

FFO.jpg

Time again for the Friday Face-Off meme, created by Books by Proxy, with weekly topics hosted by Lynn’s Book Blog.  The idea is to put up different covers for one book, and select a favorite.  This week’s theme (snakes) isn’t really speaking to me, so I decided to belatedly pick up the theme from a couple of weeks ago.

And that theme was: ‘Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.’ – A cover featuring a monk/priest/person of the cloth

The most obvious choice is the Father Brown series by G. K. Chesterton–even if I liked the TV show better!

This certainly gets right to the point!  No mistaking who the hero of this book is.

I like this foreign edition a lot–that’s about how I’d expect Father Brown to look (the smaller bespectacled man) and I assume the other man is his sometimes friend, sometimes adversary Flambeau, who features heavily in this collection.

I like this simpler cover best–it captured the iconic hat, spectacles and umbrella of Father Brown, looks rather elegant and understated, and has just a hint of humor with the umbrella hooked into the “of.”

No one appears to have done a TV tie-in cover… 🙂

Book Review: The Inimitable Jeeves

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Reviews1 Comment

In my quest for more funny reads this year, I turned to P.G. Wodehouse and an audiobook of The Inimitable Jeeves.  I am happy to report much hilarity was found.

This is the thirdish Jeeves book I’ve read–the previous two were both short story collections and turned out to have some overlapping.  This one was more properly a novel, but still very much episodic.  The premise was much the same as it was throughout the short stories: English gentleman Bertie Wooster gets into some sort of social scrape–or has a friend in said-scrape, in this book frequently Bingo Wilcox, who falls in love a good half-dozen times throughout the book–and turns to his utterly unruffled manservant Jeeves for help.  Or, alternatively, he tries to go it alone because he and Jeeves are on the outs, probably because Bertie is making a firm stance around a flamboyant article of clothing which Jeeves disapproves of.  Either way, Bertie usually manages to make the situation worse before Jeeves ultimately solves it with an ingenious manipulation of human nature.

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