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Book Review

Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape: A tale of the Darcys & the Bingleys by Marsha Altman is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice.  This is the third book in the series, and not having read the first two, I can honestly say it stands well on its own.

The story is a bit farfetched.  Mr. Darcy (along with Dr. Maddox who is Caroline Bingley’s husband) finds himself imprisoned in Transylvania and guess who comes to his rescue?  None other than our beloved Elizabeth with the help of Colonel Fitzwilliam.  And that is only one part of the story.  The author takes us on a twisting and turning and very wild ride.

Now…though the book seemed farfetched to me, I did enjoy it quite a lot.  It was never dull, that’s for certain!  I’m not sure why, but I would have enjoyed the book more if the characters weren’t from P&P.  It would have made it a bit more believable.  However, I like Ms. Altman’s writing style and she has a wonderful imagination which translates well to text.  I’d like to read the first two books in the series now.

~X~X~X~X~

Many thanks to Danielle from Sourcebooks for giving me the opportunity to read this book!

Author guest post and a book review

I’m so happy to welcome Jud Nirenberg, the author of Samson’s Walls to my blog today.  Thank you so much for the informative guest post!

Readers, don’t forget to check out my review of Samson’s Walls at the end of this post.  Enjoy!

Samson’s Walls by Jud Nirenberg

Getting there hadn’t been easy but I finally had a meeting with a major New York publishing house. I walked into a huge room on the 9^th floor, overlooking the Hudson River and sat in a hard wooden chair, miles of polished wood floor away from the two editors who looked, impassively, at me. They asked me to describe my book about Samson, the Biblical guerilla leader and his relationship with Delilah. I started to explain the tragedy of someone torn between what he wants and what his God has planned for him. He leads his people to war, risks his life and the lives of others in a vain attempt…

One of the editors cut in.

Do you realize most people who buy novels are women?

Yes. Yes, right.

And historical fiction? Almost all women. Well, except the civil war stuff. But for what you’re doing, all women.

OK.

And you wrote a guy book? About a tough guy who fights battles? Who visits prostitutes?

Well, no. It’s about people who are isolated, who carry a huge weight and who are trapped by…

Can you rewrite it from Delilah’s point of view? Call it Delilah’s Walls or something?

Yeah, we could work with that. And change your name to something, you know, gender neutral.

We discussed the possibility for another few minutes before I found out that they hadn’t read a single page of the book. They were discussing its market worthiness without looking at the book itself. I tried to explain what’s undying in the characters and their efforts to use one another but we were out of time. This isn’t a macho war novel. It’s about a man who can lead groups but can’t form personal links and it’s about a mentally tough woman who looks out for her community by dealing, as best she can, with his desires. It’s about the horror of a grand plan that doesn’t take your little human needs into account. There was no time in the meeting for that.

Samson’s Walls came from a desire to make sense out of a piece of the Bible that felt enigmatic to me. Samson is in the Book of Judges, among key leaders of the Hebrews at a time of conflict and growth. But the Bible doesn’t show him leading anyone at all. He’s a Jewish hero and an enemy of the Philistines but all he seems to want is to be with Philistine women.  He has an unhappy life, does the Lord’s will and dies a miserable, humiliating death for it. He wants nothing more than to share his life with a woman, to love and be loved, so he devotes himself to mass murder and violence.  Naturally, I wanted to spend months upon years of my free time immersed in this guy’s life.

I wanted to roll around in his failure to connect to people. I wanted to understand the person or people who wrote the version in the Bible, a version which tells us Samson’s father’s name but not the mother’s and which tells us that Samson falls in love and that he kills dozens of people for his bride but doesn’t bother to tell us her name. I wanted to fill in some of the missing pieces.

After months of research, looking into everything from past adaptations to archaeology to textual (Bible) criticism and after writing the whole story down once, there were still months of rewriting. And for a writer of historical fiction concerned with getting the context right, a Biblical setting is a fast-moving target. We’re living in a sort of golden age of scholarship and archaeology for those interested in ancient Canaan. New findings shake up old beliefs all the time. Sometimes, I’d see a new book or an essay in the Biblical Archaeology Society’s journal and find that I’d need to make a change to keep up with what scholars now know.

The essentials of the story stayed the same. Samson’s desire to break out of his loneliness stayed. The Hebrews and Philistines, Samson and his wife’s people, Samson and Delilah all are miserable bound to each other and only hurt themselves and each other by their inability to share.

I did make some of the changes the New York publishers suggested. But it’s still about a boy put under tremendous pressure by the wishes of his family, his people and his religion. It’s still about a man who never really learns how to be together with anyone and it’s about the way that he, Delilah and others struggle to survive and to take some responsibility for the people around them in a very unforgiving world. I found a publisher who agreed that the story isn’t a guy book. Samson’s not a misogynist, even if he lacks social skills and not all women insist on a book from a female character’s point of view. Samson’s Walls is, I hope, universal. It’s about loneliness and the walls that keep us, as individuals and as groups, apart.

As the paperback comes out this month, I’m looking forward to finding out what meaning other people find in my rendering of Samson’s life. I’ll keep an eye open for your comments.

~X~X~X~X~X~

My Review:

Samson’s Walls by Jud Nirenberg is the story of a real man who lived in Biblical times.  Most people will already know Samson’s basic story – Delilah, the Philistines and his famous hair – but this book takes the age old tale and turns it into an engaging page turner.

I love Biblical fiction and I really liked this book.I especially like that you don’t have to be well-versed in Scripture to enjoyit.  In fact, you probably don’t have to have ever heard about Samson at all to read and like it.  It has something for everyone.  Love and war and history with some fiction thrown in to give it a bit of extra flavour.  I like that the author added just the right amount of fiction so that it’s still completely believeable and gives it that extra boost to make it more interesting.

Read the book.  I think it’s something men and women will like.  It was published at the end of last year and is available in paperback and even for your Kindle!!

Challenge Updates

Sorry I haven’t updated the challenge totals lately!  Better late than never, right?

First off, I’ll update my VC Andrews challenge.  I’ve read three books so far:  Butterfly, Crystal and Raven from the Orphans series.  Nice short books and a quick way to get started on the challenge.

Now for The Four Month Challenge – which, by the way, has about a monthleft!  Eeeeps!  I have no updates this week, but I’m working on reading a book by a Canadian author – Ciao Bella by Janice Kirk and Gina Buonaguro (I’ll be having a special FIVE book giveaway coming up soon for my Canadian readers, so make sure you come back and check it out!!)

How did you do this week?

Moi – 105 points

Heather –150 points

Marie – 40 points

Cass – 145 points

Bella – 125 points

Raidergirl3 – 165 points

Amanda – 115 points

Jennifer – 195 points

Lucy – 80 points

J.T. -55 points

Nise’ – 140 points

Elizabeth – 20 points

Angie – 20 points

Petunia – 80 points

Susie – 40 points

Tiny Librarian – 65 points

Lindsey – 140 points

Help a blogger out!

Hello friends.  Quick request.  Can you follow this LINK and vote for Silver Waves?  I would love to win this ring and just found out about voting this morning so I’m a bit behind!  Thanks in advance <3

Book reviews by Madi and Brooklyn

The Mystery of Journeys Crowne by K. Michael Crawford.

Review by Madi:

I really liked the book, The Mystery of Journeys Crowne because unlike a lot of other books, this one you get to draw and colour in.  I love that all the drawings are so unique and colourful.  And you get to add your own drawings according to the story (which was really interesting, too!)  It sort of reminded me of the world of Alice in Wonderland – lots of things to discover.

Batty  Malgoony’s Mystic Carnivale by K. Michael Crawford.

Review by Brooklyn:

This is a fun book.  It’s cool because you get to draw in it and not get in trouble like with other books!  I like how some things were made up by the person who wrote the book and you get to use your imagination lots.  It was like a carnival right in a book.  I’ve never had a book like this before and I think other kids will really like it.

Giveaway winners

Here are the winner(s) of The Night’s Dark Shade and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World -

The lucky winner of The Night’s Dark Shade is:

The TWO winners of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World are:

O, Juliet book review and Robin Maxwell guest post.

It is my pleasure to welcome Robin Maxwell, author of the upcoming book O, Juliet (due to be released on February 2, 2010) to my blog today.  I enjoyed the book more than I can say and I can’t thank Robin enough for allowing me to be one of the first to enjoy the book.  You can read my review at the end of this post.

~x~x~x~

In the days after I had made the decision to retell the Romeo and Juliet story – for the first time in literary history as a novel – two thoughts began warring in my head:  “You’re a genius – lucky as hell that no one’s thought of it before” and “You’re out of your friggin’ mind!”

Yes, I knew I would feel comfortable in late fifteenth century Italy.  My last historical novel, Signora da Vinci, had been set there.  For that book I had outdone myself in researching the period (to the point I thought my head would explode).  I loved the Italians, and the thought of setting my Romeo and Juliet amidst them really got my creative juices bubbling.

But take on the Bard and one of the most beloved literary works of all time? What about all those Shakespeare nuts out there who would rip me to shreds for daring to tread on these sacred shores? Granted, I’d just learned that the Shakespeare’s had not been the first telling in history.  There had been three Italian short stories written in the fifteenth century about these star-crossed lovers, and in the sixteenth one long English poem.  Of course Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” had been adapted into Broadway musicals, ballets, operas, and even a graphic novel but these, in their own way, faithfully adhered to the great man’s work.  Then there were the countless movie versions.  These were even more devoted presentations, simply filmed versions of his play.

What I had in mind was rewriting the story in my own words, in my own way.  I knew I needed to lengthen the period over which it was told from a few days to a few months, and I wanted to change the setting from Verona to Florence (where the “historical” Romeo and Juliet had played out their drama.  I’d be fleshing out the lives, character arcs and motivations of Romeo and Juliet, losing some characters (Juliet’s nurse!), and adding others (a truly evil suitor and a best girlfriend).  I’d be changing the helpful cleric from Friar Lawrence to Friar Bartolomo, and giving him a public face – the man who taught a weekly symposia on Dante Alighieri at Florence Cathedral (this really happened!).

I decided that both Romeo and Juliet would, like so many Italians of that time, be Dante freaks, and that part of their initial attraction – aside from the proverbial but perfect “love-at-first-sight/sexual chemistry” – would be their shared passion for that legendary poet.  Then I really stepped in it.  I cast the pair as amateur poets themselves.  “Now you’ve done it,” I thought, “Now you have to write love poems in both their voices!”

Well, clearly the voice in my own head arguing for that great leap into the deepest of literary waters won out.  I wrote O, Juliet, and I wrote poetry in both the lovers’ voices.  Now it’s up to my readers to decide whether I did the story justice.

Last but not least, I want to thank Martina for hosting me on her wonderful blog.

~x~x~x~

O, Juliet is quite possibly one of my favourite books of all time.  It is, as the title suggests, the story of Romeo and Juliet.  I can already hear the protests of ‘no one can take on Will Shakespeare!’ but let me just say that Robin Maxwell  does, in fact,  take him on and in doing so turns the beloved story into something equally as beautiful and maybe even more readable.

Some people are asking ‘why re-tell?’, the story is already perfect.  For me, one answer that came directly to mind is for my daughters.  In our day and age, the closest most girls are going to get to ‘The Bard’ is a couple of star crossed lovers, one of whom is a vampire.  That will be their idea of Romeo and Juliet.  Let’s face it, not many of our children will be reading Shakespeare, not many of us have read Shakespeare.  But this book is written in such a way that it might just get this generation inspired.

You don’t have to be a fan of Shakespeare or even know the story of Juliet and her Romeo to like this book.  If you enjoy books with historical elements, are fond of characters rich with emotions, spirit and intricate stories, or even if you just love love, you will adore Robin’s take on this well known tale.  I started to think that perhaps these two lovers were real people and not just beings that were made up by a centuries old English poet.  I wanted them to be real as much as I wanted them to be together forever in life – and cried happy tears at the thought of them being together in death.

I have been a fan of Robin’s work for quite some time now and have read several of her books.  Each and every story she writes is a treat but this one is really something special.  I didn’t want to put it down, dreamed about it and want to read it again already and I’m definitely not a person who re-reads books!  O, Juliet is, quite simply, a gem.

Lessons in French by Laura Kinsale, review

Lessons in French is the first book I’ve read by Laura Kinsale.  When given the chance to read and review the book (Thanks Danielle from Sourcebooks!) I have to admit, it was first the cover that grabbed me.  It’s sexy and seductive, AND  I’m happy to report, that sexy and seductive is what I found when I flipped passed the cover and began to get engrossed in the book.

Callie and Trev are sweethearts from a young age but when Callie’s father catches them in a ‘less than ladylike’ position, which forces a disgraced Trev to flee England and he doesn’t return for nine long years.  He expects to find her married with many children, but is shocked to find out that Callie is still single and has been jilted three times.  You might think that they fall into each others arms immediately, but that’s not the case.  Laura takes us on a twisting and turning journey that leaves us hoping and wondering if the couple makes it back together again.

Laura Kinsale is an absolute star.  She weaves a fabulous tale full of intrigue, love and wit.  She tells about a wide variety of characters – none of them boring and all of them unique.  In a word, the story is beautiful.

Where You Can Find More Info on Lessons in French andLaura Kinsale!

Laura’s Fabulous New Website

Laura’s Twitter

Sourcebooks Casablanca’s Twitter

Our Sourcebooks Spotlight

ShelfAwareness Book Brahmin Feature

Word Wenches Interview

All About Romance Interview

Romance B(u)y the Book Guest Blog

B&N Heart 2 Heart Feature

And be on the look out for the following coming soon!

1/25 Border’s True Romance Blog with Sue Grimshaw

1/27 Tartitude Interview

1/27 Night Owl Romance Interview

1/28 The Season Interview

1/29 Apprentice-Writer Interview

2/1 Romance Reader at Heart Feature Author

2/4 Coffee Time Romance Feature

2/3 Casablanca Authors Guest Blog

2/4 The Romance Dish Interview

2/8 Dear Author First Sale Feature

2/10 RomCon, Inc. Guest Blog

2/15 Romance Junkies Author Feature

2/16 Gossamer Obsessions Interview

2/17 The Good, The Bad and the Unread Interview

2/19 Babbling About Books and More Interview

2/22 Once Upon a Romance Guest Article

2/23 Dear Author Guest Blog

EVENTS

2/12 Albuquerque, NM Barnes and Noble Coronado Mall Signing, 6pm

2/13 LERA RWA Chapter Meeting, 1pm

2/14 DFW Tea Readers Brunch, Noon (location TBA)

2/14 Dallas, TX Barnes and Noble Lincoln Park Signing, 3pm

Author Guest post and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, The Last Man in the World giveaway!

I’m thrilled to welcome Abigail Reynolds, the author of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World, to my blog today!  Enjoy her guest post and check out my review of the book HERE.  Details on the giveaway will be at the end of this post.

~X~X~X~X~

Pride & Prejudice & Me

My name is Abigail, and I’m a Pride & Prejudice addict.  I first read it when I was thirteen and making a valiant effort to read all the classics on my mother’s bookshelf.  I thought it was great, especially compared to Proust, Joyce, Milton, and some of the other authors who were just a wee bit over my adolescent head, though I’d never have admitted it at the time.  I could understand the plot and I liked the characters.  It was my first experience of classic literature that was fun to read.  A couple of years later when I read it again in high school, I realized it was funny, too.  It went on my comfort-food reading list.  It had a happy ending, likeable characters, lots of wit, and no suffering, or so I innocently thought.  There was something of a Jane Austen cult among my friends at college, and we had wonderful times talking about Pride & Prejudice.

Fast forward twenty years and more than a dozen re-readings to the dawn of the internet.  I missed those late-night college discussions of Austen, so I was delighted to discover the Republic of Pemberley (www.pemberley.com), one of the very first Austen websites.  I plunged into on-line discussions of Pride & Prejudice and other literature.  Unfortunately, the website closed down for one week a year, leaving me in acute Austen withdrawal.  In desperation, I found my way to a section of the site where they had archived Austen-related fiction by members (since discontinued).  Fiction about Austen characters was better than no Austen, after all, and I discovered that I really enjoyed the stories.  I read every bit that was available, something that was actually possible back in 2001, before the great explosion of Jane Austen fan fiction.  Then I was in trouble again.  No more stories.  I impatiently waited for people to write new chapters of their stories, but that wasn’t enough.  The only solution was to write some myself.

I started by trying to fix things.  The misunderstandings between Darcy and Elizabeth always made me want to tear my hair out, so I decided to fix one of them.  I started with the scene at the Lambton Inn where my two favorite characters part, each believing the other one never wants to see them again.  In my new all-powerful writer persona, I made them both get off their high horses and admit their feelings to each other.  “Ha!”  I told them.  “See how much easier life can be when you just communicate with each other?”  With a great deal of trepidation, I posted the first chapter of From Lambton to Longbourn online, expecting everyone to hate it.

To my utter delight, people liked it and asked for more.  More Lizzy and Darcy?  No problem for me!  I could write about those two all day long.  I spent several delightful months finishing the story and sharing it with interested readers.  Then I finished it, and decided that was that.  Writing had been fun, but very time-consuming, and my family and job wanted more of me.

Unfortunately, no one had warned me that writing was even more addictive than Pride & Prejudice.  I lasted all of two weeks before I gave in to overwhelming temptation and started writing Conquering Mr. Darcy.  By then I was already involved in researching Regency life to make my stories more authentic and discovering all sorts of juicy tidbits.  For example, one eye-opener was that while today we differentiate between pre-marital and post-marital sex, in the Regency the great divide was between pre-engagement and post-engagement sex and sexual contact, because the engagement was a legally binding contract, while the wedding was just the formality of the church’s blessing.  As long as an engaged couple was reasonably discreet and went off into the shrubbery to do whatever they did, everyone would look the other way.   That opened up a lot of dramatic possibilities!

Learning the history has added new depth to Pride & Prejudice for me.  Every time I read a chapter or two, I discover something new that I’d missed before.  That’s what I love about Austen now – all the different layers she writes on.  It inspires me to more and more explorations of her original story.  Lucky for me, she also leaves a lot of room for fleshing out her characters in my variations on her original.  There is no end of possibilities for plot changes in Pride & Prejudice, and it’s a privilege to spend more time in the world Austen created.

Thanks for inviting me, and I hope you enjoy reading Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World!

MR. FITZWILLIAM DARCY: THE LAST MAN IN THE WORLD—INSTORES JANUARY 2010!

In this sexy Jane Austen sequel, Elizabeth Bennet accepts Mr. Darcy’s first marriage proposal, answering the “What if…?” question fans everywhere have pondered

” I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

Famous last words indeed! Elizabeth Bennet’s furious response to Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal has resonated for generations of readers. But what if she had never said it? Would she have learned to recognize Mr. Darcy’s admirable qualities on her own? Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy follows Elizabeth and Darcy as they struggle to find their way through the maze of their prejudices after Elizabeth, against her better judgment, agrees to marry Darcy instead of refusing his proposal.

Two of the most beloved characters in English literature explore the meaning of true love in a tumultuous and passionate attempt to make a success of their marriage.

About the Author

Abigail Reynolds is a physician and a lifelong Jane Austen enthusiast. She began writing The Pemberley Variations series in 2001, and encouragement from fellow Austen fans convinced her to continue asking “What if…?” She lives with her husband and two teenage children in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, please visit http://pemberleyvariations.com/

~X~X~X~X~

Giveaway time!  The wonderful Danielle from Sourcebooks has generously offered up two copies of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World to some of my lucky readers!  US and Canada only.  Just leave a comment with your email address to enter!  Ends January 25, 2010.