C.A. Gray's Blog, page 54

Review of The Tuscan Child

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The Tuscan Child bounces back and forth in time between father (in the 1940s during WWII) and daughter (in the 1970s just after her father’s death, trying to piece together his history.) The father, Sir Hugo Langley, is shot down over a tiny village in Italy called San Salvatore, which is German-occupied at the time. An Italian woman named Sofia with a small son whose husband is missing in action hides and shelters him, and they fall in love.

Meanwhile, Joanna Langley is picking up the pieces of her life after her seriously depressed father has passed away. She found a letter among his things indicating that he was in Italy and he wrote to a woman named Sofia, and of “their beautiful boy.” Who was Sofia? What happened to her? Did they have a child together that Joanna knew nothing about?

She travels to Tuscany (hence the name of the story, though I assume the “child” refers to the “beautiful boy” discussed in the letter) to try to find the answer. While there she is taken in by kind rural Italians who teach her to cook, and there is so much discussion of the food and what they ate that it reminded me a bit of Eat Pray Love. She meets Sofia’s son Renzo, but he is too old to be the “beautiful boy” the letter spoke of. (Also, he’s very attractive.) Eventually Joanna trusts him enough to tell him a bit of why she’s come, to see what he knows about what became of his mother. Unfortunately, not much–all anybody in the town knows is that she was seen driving away with a German soldier and was never seen or heard from again.

And, per all Rhys Bowen’s novels, a dead body turns up that complicates everything. Joanna gets the impression that somebody doesn’t want her asking questions, and for awhile she is framed for the murder. But does Renzo have anything to do with it? Can she trust him? Or is he only pretending to be interested in her to get her alone and finish the job?

I’ve come to expect Rhys Bowen novels (outside of the Royal Spyness mysteries) to have a certain flavor to them: slow-paced, perfect for winding down at the end of a long day, involving lots of details and straight-forward dialogue. (People in her stories seem to say the most obvious things that most authors would omit entirely because it would be understood from the action, and the climactic moments are all, “I will not miss this time,” or “I believe that you find me attractive,” etc. No nuance or psychological complexity at all.)  There’s always a little romance, though it’s not the main plot by any means. The stories always turn into mysteries sooner or later, but it’s a slow boil, and takes a long time to even reveal what the mystery is. Then there are always a few surprising twists at the end. Nothing too memorable or gripping, but you know exactly what you’re getting, and it’s always entertaining.

My rating: ***1/2

Language: none

Sexual content: a little but very tastefully done

Violence: a little but not at all gratuitous

Political content: none (it’s historical) 

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Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Today’s podcast comes from this blog post, Flow. 

Check out this episode!

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Review of The Toll

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I was so excited about the release of this book, because I absolutely LOVED Scythe and Thunderhead. I had high expectations, which might be part of the reason for my disappointment. But I was disappointed, for several reasons.

First, while Scythe followed Rowan and Citra almost exclusively, and Thunderhead followed them and also introduced Grayson, The Toll was all over the place in terms of characters. There were several new characters introduced whom I never had a chance to care about because we didn’t stick with any one perspective long enough. Citra and Rowan didn’t even come into the story until like 4 hours in. While the scope of the plot was always worldwide, in the other two books we got to experience worldwide events as they affected one character (or a few) with whom we could identify. In this one, though, it felt like we were observing the whole thing from 30,000 feet. It’s like the difference between reading statistics about a disaster, versus hearing an individual’s story that tugs on your heartstrings.

Second, it had been long enough since I read Thunderhead that I forgot how certain characters came to be where they were… and if The Toll does refresh the reader’s memory on this, I missed it. This might be my fault, because I was listening to the audio version, so maybe I wasn’t paying attention to every detail. But it required suspension of disbelief on a number of points because I couldn’t recall why things were the way they were. Some of the events that occurred in The Toll also didn’t make a lot of logical sense to me. They just seemed convenient plot devices to keep the story moving.

Third, there was a very clear political agenda, it seemed to me. The author’s views about the way society should be (from a particular political viewpoint) played heavily into the story, and was painted in a soft romantic light. This made me feel like I was being emotionally manipulated to agree with him.

For all that, I did still enjoy the story. I was fully engaged at least in the parts where Citra/Scythe Anastasia and Rowan were together or searching for each other. I still loved the character of the Thunderhead –in many ways, its character seemed like God to me. (I disliked some aspects of the ending, mostly because the Thunderhead was my favorite character.) But it’s hard to know how to wrap up a story like this one. The overall plot is still incredibly creative and unique. I just wish I could recommend the first two books in this series without necessarily recommending the third. But Thunderhead ends on a cliffhanger more or less, so it doesn’t really leave that option.

My rating: ** 1/2

Language: there was some but it wasn’t overwhelming. Barely registered for me. 

Sexual content: none that I recall. There was some that was implied though. 

Violence: it was there but I didn’t think it was over the top. 

Political content: this was the worst of it for me, by far. It was bad enough that I’d probably have stopped reading it, had it not taken about 2/3 of the book to become really overt, and by that point I kept thinking he’d made his point and would now leave well enough alone and get on with the story. But… no. He didn’t. It’s that way until the end. 

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The Overdue Life of Amy Byler, by Kelly Harms

Today’s podcast comes from this blog post review, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler. 

Check out this episode!

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Review of The Mermaid’s Sister

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I absolutely loved this! Such a unique voice, and a whimsical story!

From the very beginning, the narrative voice makes it clear that this story is set in a fantasy world. Clara, the main character, finds that her sister Maren is developing scales on her body, turning into a mermaid. Their auntie who raised them told them stories all their lives of the raven who brought her Clara, the seashell that brought her Maren, and how their best friend O’Neill was found under an apple tree, though he was raised by their auntie’s husband (who did not live with her, for reasons they find out later.)

When Maren begins to turn into a mermaid in earnest, it’s up to Clara and O’Neill to get her to the ocean post-haste, before she withers away into nothing. This is the first conflict. The second conflict is that Clara, who grew up with O’Neill, suddenly finds herself in love with him–but believes that he is in love with her sister. The third conflict is that on their journey to the ocean, they find themselves captured by a traveling circus, quite willing to exploit Maren (a real live mermaid!) for their own mercenary purposes. Can they escape in time to deliver Maren to her true home?

While the very end contained a few Deux Ex Machina moments that were a little too convenient, I could easily overlook these because the rest of the story was so delightful. I raced through to the end, eager to discover how they would escape, and how Clara would discover that O’Neill really loved her after all. Because it’s the kind of story that ends in a “happily ever after”… that much was obvious from the beginning. Sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed!

My rating: *****

Language: none

Sexual content: none, which really impressed me considering the subject matter and opportunity for it

Violence: fantasy only, nothing to speak of

Political content: none

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Mystwick School of Musicraft by Jessica Khoury

This week’s podcast comes from this blog review of Mystwick School of Musicraft. 

Check out this episode!

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Review of Flow

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This is one of the most unique and insightful self-help books I think I’ve ever read… and it’s not at all what I assumed it would be based upon the title.

I thought it would just essentially expand upon the truism that optimal experience is to be found in getting so immersed in an activity that one loses track of time, and that one should seek out the activities in which this occurs for him. It does make the first half of that point, but it argues that these experiences can be created rather than discovered, from almost anything… provided one knows the rules of how to do it.

The rules are these: the activity must be one freely chosen for its own sake, rather than for the sake of some external reward. There should be rules associated with the activity in question to provide a framework for action. The feedback to tell you if you’re doing well or poorly must be immediate and clear. The activity should require skills of some kind, and it should be commensurate with one’s abilities (too easy and it’s boring; too hard and it produces anxiety). Examples include games of almost every kind, from sports to board games; dancing; rock climbing; reading; art; music (making it and also listening to and appreciating it if one does so with a critical ear); social interactions (there are certainly social rules, and one knows in the moment whether or not he’s the life of the party!), and many complex careers. Even less complex or “rote” jobs have the potential for flow, provided one sets an intrinsic goal with immediate feedback. Some of the most compelling examples of flow occurred in extreme circumstances of deprivation and hardship. Yet the survivors all seemed to possess this one thing in common: they created an intrinsic goal with immediate feedback, even if the feedback was only within their own minds, in order to find purpose in the bleakest of circumstances.

The author makes the point that creating flow is natural in children–to them, everything is new and fascinating. Children get so immersed in play that time slips by blissfully and in wonder. This remains the case until formal education replaces intrinsic with extrinsic goals. Once that happens, learning and improving their skills ceases to be enjoyable–now, it’s something they “have” to do. Certain personalities (those he calls “autotelic,” or those who inherently know how to structure their time to create flow experiences) can overcome this, but many never do. Most of us continue to be motivated only by external rewards well into adulthood. There’s no point in continuing to learn, once we’ve graduated from formal education and are competent enough at our jobs to get our basic needs met. Many of us don’t structure our leisure time for flow activities either–because this takes effort, and we’re tired at the end of a long day. So instead, we passively consume entertainment, or seek sensual pleasure. But pleasure is not the same as true enjoyment as he defines it. There is no purpose to it. As a result, as adults, many of us find our lives slipping away in boredom and vague anxiety. But this doesn’t have to be the case.

“Flow” is empowering, because it makes explicit the tools that every one of us has at our disposal to shape our own experiences–if we just have the discipline and motivation to use them.

My rating: *****

Language, Politics, Sexual Content, Violence: not relevant (it’s non-fiction)

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Ribbons of Scarlet by Kate Quinn (et al)

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog post, Ribbons of Scarlet. 

Check out this episode!

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Review of The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

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This is a fun and fluffy chick lit story about a single mom whose husband abandoned her and her kids three years earlier, only to return in a fit of conscience and give her the summer off. It’s the first time Amy has been free to tend to her own needs and make her own choices since her early 20s, when she married and had kids. She goes from Pennsylvania to New York, initially to attend a librarian conference as a speaker (hence the whole “overdue life” bit–it’s an allusion to her profession), and then to stay with a college best friend who now runs a beauty magazine. She thus finds herself the subject of the article “Momspringa”: a newly coined term meaning a sabbatical from mom-hood. They give her a makeover, send her to daily exercise classes and the spa and out for fancy meals every day, turn her into a Twitter sensation, and set her up on a series of blind dates with eligible men vying for her attention. Meanwhile, at the conference, she meets hot single dad librarian Daniel, and they have fantastic chemistry… but they don’t want to pursue an actual relationship, because she’s supposed to go home at the end of the summer, and then where would they be?

That’s the light and fluffy stuff. As the story goes on, though, Amy starts to have more of an identity crisis. Why is she enjoying being away from her kids so much? Does that make her no better than her ex (who isn’t technically her ex because she never bothered to file for divorce)? Does John, said ex, want her back now? Does she want him back? Has she settled into the identity of the woman John martyred all those years ago, refusing to accept help so that she can stay stuck in her bitterness? Can she forgive him and move on with her life–either with him or without him?

I was wondering how the story could possibly end about halfway through, because while I love the transformation Amy gets to experience in New York, she still does have kids back home, and she’s so conflicted between John and Daniel. In a normal rom-com, she’d obviously end up with Daniel… but this is more chick lit than rom-com. It’s less about her romantic life and more about finding herself. She’s still got a life she loves back in Pennsylvania, and a lot of history and baggage with her ex-husband, who, yes, abandoned her, but is actually portrayed as a rather sympathetic character. I’m glad it ended the way it did, though. By the time the story got there, we the reader get to experience the evolution of Amy’s thoughts and feelings with her such that it really couldn’t end any other way. She finds herself, she finds peace, and she gets a second chance at happiness.

My rating: ****

Language: if there is any, I can’t remember it, so it wasn’t significant. 

Violence: none. Other than Amy fantasizing about bashing her ex’s head in, which is actually rather comical. 

Sexual content: lots. It’s not like you get every detail, but it’s definitely there, and extramarital sex is portrayed as normal and expected. This seems more like just the worldview of the author and less like an agenda she’s pushing, though, so it didn’t bother me.

Political content: again, the worldview of the author is fairly obvious, so there is a decent amount of it. But here too, it doesn’t bother me because it doesn’t feel like an agenda on her part, it’s just something she takes for granted. (I don’t mind reading books written by authors who see the world differently than I do, provided I don’t feel like they’re trying to manipulate me into thinking the same way!)

 

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The Victory Garden, Rhys Bowen

Today’s podcast comes from this blog review, The Victory Garden by Rhys Bowen. 

Check out this episode!

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