True love. How much can it survive? Can it survive having your beloved marry your sister instead? What quality will it be after everything? And how important is tradition if it ruins someone’s life? Esquivel tackles these questions in Like Water for Chocolate. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book set in Mexico, and I certainly don’t know much about Mexican history. This book made me want to investigate that further, which is what great literature should do. It’s magic realism, and there was a very interesting balance between the two. It is also very different than the magic realism of Sarah Addison Allen, which is my only other experience with this genre. It’s much deeper and more serious. I can’t say that I liked the ending, but I did like the book as a whole. It’s a quick and satisfying read. I love this twist on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Julie and Romeo own rival flower shops in town. Their families have hated each other for as long as either of them can remember, but no one seems to know why. Then they meet (or re-meet) at a local conference, and fall in love. How will their grown children, who have been learning to hate the other family as they did that growing, react to this? Not well, as you can probably guess. The story was well-told, with plenty of humor and plenty of suspense. Of course it doesn’t end as Shakespeare’s does, but you are kept guessing to the last moment if they will end up together or not. There was some unnecessary swearing (okay, all swearing is unnecessary, but I really didn’t see the point of it in this book at all), but that was the only major disappointment in this creative and amusing book. Certain books open your eyes to the world around you, and that’s exactly what this book did for me. By reading The Mao Case, I discovered that I know next to nothing about China, either present-day or historically. This book is one in a series about Inspector Chen, who is a detective in Shanghai. The case he is tackling this time involves a suspected secret about Chairman Mao. It is his task to discover this potentially embarrassing secret so that the news never breaks. I’m not a big mystery reader, so I really can’t judge it on that. The writing style seemed a little stilted, but I’m guessing that’s more a cultural difference than anything. I probably won’t read any of the other Inspector Chen books, but that’s solely because mystery isn’t really my thing. I am grateful, however, for the realization that this book brought – my knowledge of China is sorely lacking, and I plan to start making up for that as soon as possible. This book opened my eyes to another country, another people, another culture. What more can we ask of a book?
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It takes a lot of courage to tackle the Church of Scientology. Wright does a fabulous job of keeping his reporting neutral. He often just portrays the facts next to what the “church” claims, and the reader does the work for him of determining legitimacy. If you’ve ever been interested in the Church of Scientology or other religions, you would find this a very well-done take on the subject. I wasn’t planning to review this book, figuring I’d be too embarrassed to write about it (or admit I had read it). After all, the author has sex with her husband every day for an entire year. Not my typical reading material. But after I started reading, I realized that other women need to hear Muller’s message. The book is really a memoir of her entire marriage, not just that one year. It’s reassuring to know that many people run up against the same obstacles in their marriages. This is a great book to read for any married woman, especially if you have kids (which I don’t, but it was still relevant!). Highly recommended for any lover of books. Fadiman is a superb essay writer, discussing everything from marrying libraries to sesquipedalians (one of my all-time favorite words). A reminder that all of us bibliophiles are not alone – there are others out there who have quirks just as weird as ours! The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things is a rather unusual approach to a biography. Each chapter begins with an object, which Paula Byrne uses as a springboard to explore Austen’s life, family, and novels. The objects range from Jane’s lap writing desk to a soldier’s cocked hat. Some were more related or personal to her than others. Some were definitely a stretch, yet somehow Byrne always found a connection. If you want a chronological biography of Jane’s life, this is not it. It follows the general path of birth to death, but rather loosely. It skips all over, even within a chapter, since it’s more theme-based. If you want a general picture of Jane – and not just her, but the world she lived in – then this is the book for you. You learn a lot about Regency England, as well as subtle ways that Jane’s world entered her work. For example, I had no idea that Lady Bertram requesting an East Indian shawl in Mansfield Park was such a sign of the times and the fashion, but Byrne builds an entire chapter on the shawl, east India trade, and the London riots. Turns out many things in Austen’s novels have much greater social significance than I ever realized. Any lover of Jane Austen should read this book. Not so much for the biography; there are other books that do that better. More for the picture of the world that Jane lived in and how that intertwines with the world of her novels. After Rome is the story of Britain after the Roman soldiers left around 410 AD. The civilization that everyone is used to begins crumbling, and soon it becomes every man for himself. Cadogan and Dinas are cousins with a complicated family past and very different personalities. Dinas wants to get what he can from the lack of civilization. He begins recruiting men to become pirates. The riches he gains will then allow him to become king in a land where any ambitious leader could grab the right to be king. Cadogan takes a leadership role reluctantly when the Saxon army burns his hometown, and he becomes the de facto leader of the remaining citizens. They start life over in the wilderness, learning how to do everything on their own. I’ve typically enjoyed books by Morgan Llywelyn, and this one was no different. She researches thoroughly and creates realistic characters that grab your interest. My only feeling of dissatisfaction with After Rome is the rushed ending. Forty pages from the end I was wondering if this was simply the first book in a series; there was so much story line to go, if told at the pace of the rest of the book. But nope! – it was all wrapped up by the time the pages ran out. It felt much too rushed to me. There was much more story potential there. It almost seemed as if Llywelyn got tired of writing the stories of these characters. Other than that, this book gave a great picture of what Britain would have been like in a time period that hasn’t been written about much. It was an enjoyable and occasionally amusing read. Eighty Days is a story of a race – a race around the world. In 1889, two female reporters set off in opposite directions to race around the world. Nellie Bly, who had made a name for herself in undercover reporting, wanted to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg from Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, which had been published 16 years ago. She had been begging her editor for a year to let her attempt this race against time. Elizabeth Bisland, a literary reviewer, was begged by her editor to set off as soon as possible after Nellie and try to beat her back to New York. This sounds like a great premise for a suspenseful novel. But it’s not a novel. This all really happened. And that’s what makes this book so fascinating. This is not the author’s imagination at work, describing what this race may have been like. This is the world – and world travel, in all its steam-powered glory – as it really was in 1889. Goodman does a wonderful job of showing Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland as real people. Much of his source material was drawn from their journals of their trips. The chapters alternate between the two women, but he describes their journeys in parallel, so the suspense is kept until the very end. I actually found myself feeling stressed halfway through the book, as yet another snag in the travel plans hit. This race around the world is an event I never would have known about if not for Goodman’s book. It’s an event well worth knowing! I don’t think I would have the courage even now, in 2013, to set off on an around the world voyage by myself. Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland deserve all sorts of credit and recognition. I’m so glad Matthew Goodman has done his part to bring their fascinating journeys to light. So I've been looking for a way to show in more detail what I like about the books I read. Sometimes it doesn't come out very clearly in the review. Sometimes I spend more time focusing on what I didn't like, even though there are some definite positive things about the book. To solve this problem, I am now introducing the 5* Elements.
For each book review I post on Smiling Shelves, I’ll include a list of those things that I absolutely loved about the book (well, only if it deserves them). For an absolutely amazing book, this will show what was so absolutely amazing about it. For a just plain good (or maybe not-so-good) book, this can show the redeeming features, things that were absolutely amazing even if the book as a whole is not. In other words, it doesn't have to be a five star book to have some 5* Elements. Here are the general categories I’m thinking of right now:
I’d love some feedback from you, especially as this system gets going. Does it work? Is it helpful? What are some other 5* Elements that you’d like to see? |
My name is Julie, and I own a lot of books. As in, they are stacked on the floor because I've run out of room on the shelves. And those shelves? There are so many books on them that they smile -- not sag; smile. This blog will cover book reviews and all manner of other bookish things.
You can contact me at julie@smilingshelves.com. Archives
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