Black Beauty by Anne Sewell

I hadn't read Black Beauty in decades and decided to revisit the story. When Anna Sewell wrote this novel, horses were everywhere and many were mistreated. Parts of the novel come across as a societal statement, although she no doubt had good cause to share what she knew.

Black Beauty follows a horse from birth and a happy childhood to harsh conditions as a work horse during the 1800's. Sewell seems particularly adept at creating a wonderful story from Beauty's viewpoint. The story begins with Beauty's life as a foal in a squire's pasture, able to roam and living a carefree existence. As time passes, the horse is sold again and again with each circumstance leading to ever more difficult and unhealthy working conditions.

Sewell is able to personalize Black Beauty and create such interesting circumstances that the 'life of a horse' actually turns out to be very interesting. This book fascinated me as a youngster. I was around ten when I read it and at that age really didn't notice how many times Sewell went off on a tangent talking about the ills of working a horse on Sunday, or using an uncomfortable rein or bit, or decrying animal abuse. These parts come off a bit preachy. Even so, I found the book much as I remembered it.

Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase

I feel like I should apologize for adding yet another Regency Romance to the Bookish Souls blog, but I couldn't resist. Last Night's Scandal has a tongue-in-cheek humor that sets it apart from other Regency books and I found it a lot of fun to read.

The novel begins with a letter from Olivia to her dearest friend, Lisle. The letter is filled with capitalization and underlining and cross-outs at key points. The author uses the letters as a clever way to bring Olivia's independent and witty side out.  Lisle has been her friend from childhood and has spent the past several years in Egypt. His parents want him home and when he finally returns home for a visit, cut him off and demand he restore an old castle passed on by a cousin.

What makes this story so much fun is there is never a question that Olivia and Lisle like each other. After all, they have been friends for quite some time.  It's just that they've never looked at one another in that way. And when they do, it's a rather daunting prospect on both sides.  I love Olivia. She's a great foil for Lisle who has his own unique personality.

While the author did use the words "Mine", at least the heroine didn't say please and Lisle never growled.  A great regency and worth a look.

Roses of the West by Anne Seagraves

I've been studying the Civil War and old west history for a novel I'm in the middle of writing.  I discovered this book and picked it up on a whim. I'm not a typically enthusiastic autobiographical reader, but I must say Roses of the West is a fascinating read.

Anne Seagraves tells the stories of a number of women who became famous in their own right during the 1800's. From an opera singer to ranchers and runaway slaves, the stories are gripping.  As autobiographies go, this is an excellent one. Anne has a storyteller's gift and while the events are non-fiction, Anne makes you care about the people whose lives were affected by the times they lived in.

Sometimes in my own comfortable existence, I forget how hard life once was for the early settlers. Many versions are somewhat sanitized or written in a generalized manner. Roses of the West had details that made me feel that I understood the problems these women faced and how they survived.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque with translation by A.W. Wheen

It is my firm belief that any proponent of war and any person willing to declare war should first be put into the most dangerous engagement they would consign to someone else. All Quiet on the Western Front is as close as I've ever gotten to war and as close as I ever want to be to such a thing. While I have long been a pacifist, it is the men like Erich Remarque who have lived it and suffered from it who truly can demonstrate how horrible a thing it really is.   

All Quiet on the Western Front is not a book for the faint of heart. It follows a young soldier through the trenches of World War I, fighting on German side of the war. The book engages the reader from the start with vivid descriptions and a narration that brings the soldier's hopes and fears close to the reader. If you've never read All Quiet On the Western Front, I think you'll find it a hard but worthwhile read.

 I can't do the book justice with just a blog entry...here is an excerpt:  

The young recruits of course know none of these things. They get killed simply because they hardly can tell shrapnel from high-explosive, they are mown down because they are listening anxiously to the roar of the big coal-boxes falling in the rear, and miss the light, piping whistle of the low spreading daisy-cutters. They flock together like sheep instead of scattering, and even the wounded are shot down like hares by the airmen.  

Their pale turnip faces, their pitiful clenched hands, the fine courage of these poor devils, the desperate charges and attacks made by the poor brave wretches, who are so terrified that they dare not cry out, but with battered chests, with torn bellies, arms and legs only whimper softly for their mothers and cease as soon as one looks at them. 

Their sharp, downy dead faces have the awful expressionlessness of dead children. 

It brings a lump into the throat to see how they go over and run and fall. A man would like to spank them, they are so stupid and to take them by the arm and lead them away from here where they have no business to be.

Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson

As an author my strength is writing, so I picked up Guerrilla Marketing at the library with the hope of finding something that will set me on the right track of building a marketing campaign for novels.  Small business owners would do well to read it.  I found that some of the advice didn't apply but could see its usefulness to brick and mortar businesses.

In gleaning the information, this was the advice that seemed most appropriate to an artistic or creative business with regard to marketing.

1) Have a great product.

If you are going to pay for advertising, the author suggests having a great product. Otherwise, the marketing campaigns will only lead to a quicker downfall when people try it and realize they don't like it and spread the word. 

2) Stick with the plan.

When creating a marketing plan, the author suggests thinking the strategy through completely and then tying all advertising into that strategy without wavering. He said that many times when stores don't see immediate results, they pull the campaign and end up losing their investment.

3) Be consistent.

When trying to decide what kind of marketing to use, Levinson advised consistency. If your budget is $300, don't spend it on a one-shot ad. Instead, spread it across several smaller ads that are consistently reaching the audience. People are inundated by ads and rarely pay attention to the first, second, or even the third advertisement, but if a business continues a regular campaign, eventually it will sink in.

4) There are two types of advertising, the ads to draw new customers and the ones to remind current customers of new products or releases. Guerrilla Marketing recommends a tight focus on current customers. If you're sacrificing old customers for new, it's bad business. It takes 6 times the effort to entice a new customer than to keep a current one.

Those were the most applicable sections to me, but there were plenty more suggestions that would be more appropriate for a small store.

Shock by Robin Cook

In writing this blog, I've been encouraging people to step outside their comfort zones and try some genres that they may not typically read. In keeping with my own advice, I picked up a medical thriller. Now, honestly, I don't read in the thriller genre much. I've tried Tom Clancy and just didn't get into his books enough to take them home with me.

While looking for something outside my normal reading scope, I discovered Robin Cook. Shock is the story of two women who donate eggs in return for thousands of dollars. Although they signed a confidentiality contract, they become curious about the outcome of their eggs and whether any children had been born. With a decision to do some investigating, the women go undercover into the facility. What they find does indeed shock them and puts their lives in danger.

There were one or two moments in the story that stretched the imagination, but overall, the story was interesting enough that I was able to overlook them. Robin Cook's style is easy to read and his incorporation of medical knowledge made for a unique thriller.

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Winter of Magic’s Return by Pamela F. Service

This is a post-apocalyptic tale written before they were in style (published in 1985).  The book is about a trio of children living at a school, one is an orphan and has become a ward of the schoo

Five hundred years after a nuclear holocaust, the world is cold and cloudy year round. Strange animals mutated from the years of nuclear winter roam the Earth. The school is safe, but Wellington, Heather, and Earl take flight from the school when a couple comes to the school to claim Earl.

The couple claim to be his relatives but he knows they aren’t. Nightmares plague him and he’s lost his memory, but he knows not to trust them. 

Expect a few surprises if you’re never read the story or heard the spoilers.  It is unique enough to make for a very good read. 

Promise of Pleasure by Cheryl Holt

Cheryl Holt is one of my favorite regency romance writers.  Lately I've read a lot of regencies, so there will probably be a higher percentage of blogs on the subject than in a few years when my interests have changed. Promise of Pleasure is about a young woman who lives a less than perfect life with her step-mother and half-sisters. Her step-mother is interested in titled gentleman for her daughter Felicity and hopes to make a match with Jordan Winthrop, heir to the Earl of Sunderland.

In the meantime, Mary has taken an elixir from a peddler who promises that one drink in the presence of her true love and he will be hers. Everything goes wrong when Jordan blocks the man Mary has targeted just moments after she drinks the potion and she sees him instead.

What I love about Promise of Pleasure is the combination of humorous scenes with some heart-touching sorrowful moments when it seems that the story will end badly.  I truly love reading Cheryl Holt. If you enjoy romances and have somehow missed Cheryl Holt, I highly recommend her.

Fit for Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond

 This is a book on eating and detoxification. As expected, the gist of the book is that fruits and vegetables are good, while dairy and meat are more questionable, but the authors make a program that allows for everything healthy. (Colas and refined white sugar are definitely out).

The authors also make note of things that I haven’t heard elsewhere. For example, fruit should be eaten before meals, never with or after . The reasoning is that the fruit will have to wait while the heavier food digests and will rot as it passes through turning the whole meal toxic.

According to the book, for breakfast, have as much fruit and in any variety as you like. If you need something heavier to fill up before lunch, the authors suggest bananas. After lunch or dinner, wait three hours before eating fruit again.

Limit dairy products, refined sugars, flour, and heavy meats. 

All of it has been said before, but the authors make some good points that you might not hear in another healthy lifestyle book. Also, the back is filled with recipes and food combining suggestions.

For my part, I’ve cut junk food sugar nearly completely out, eating sweets only on holidays. Sugar is addictive. I know because it was an incredibly hard thing to do and I ended up bribing myself to get through the first two months.

It seems the book is now split between the two authors. The link to Amazon below is the book I have.

A Drowned Maiden's Hair

I had a few arguments with myself as to whether to post this book or not.  Frankly, I was disappointed because somehow I thought I was going to be reading a paranormal story.  But in the end, I do think it is a well-told story for the young adult market.

As with many YA novels, the story opens with a girl living in an orphanage whose life is harsh because she speaks her mind and is not considered pretty. She has been punished by being locked in the outhouse with the spiders and smells.  She bravely sings the Battle Hymn of the Republic to prove she's not afraid.

While she is singing, one of a trio of sisters looking for a girl to adopt hears her and decides that she is the one. From here we take a sharp turn because the sisters are hiding Maud and have plans to make her a part of a clandestine activity to fleece others. 

She then must decide whether a lie is worth the love she wants from the sisters.

Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop PG-13

Perusing the shelves at the library, I overlooked this book on at least four occasions before finally deciding to read it.  For me, the turn off was the use of names like Lucivar & Daemon. But I did eventually read the book and discovered that I like Anne Bishop novels. 

Bishop has an ability to write characters that come alive off the page. The first book in a trilogy, Daughter of the Blood is about two brothers of a long-lived race who have been tormented and enslaved by the current queen & witch in Terreille.  They are in the room serving lords and ladies when a broken witch tells of the coming of the Queen of the Dark Realm.

The Queen of Darkness turns out to be a true heroine and a compassionate person. While none of the main characters are tame, in the moral code of right and wrong, they actually represent good. The whole realm is dark, and the brothers murder in self-defense. The enemy of the brothers and the coming queen is a pair of deranged women whose power enslaves the brothers for hundreds of years.

One of my favorite elements of the book is the introduction of the kindred.  They are animals with the power to communicate and provide comic relief and joy to the story. I'm not one to like incredibly dark topics, and this book does deal with some very harsh topics and sensitive issues including rape which would not be suitable for a younger audience. This is probably the darkest book I've read that I can say I liked reading.

Life’s That Way: A Memoir by Jim Beaver

Jim Beaver is an actor who has played the rolls of prospector on Deadwood and a demon hunter on Supernatural among others.  When I stumbled across his book at the library I picked it up to flip a few pages. For me to pick up a book is not unusual.  I’ve perused the aisles of biographies and promptly put back dozens of books. Usually it’s more of a walk-through on my way to another shelf. But this one captured my interest and I found myself immediately drawn into the story.

Jim tells the story of his wife’s battle with cancer. He shares some very deep and personal moments.  Let me warn you in advance, have a box of tissues on hand because you’ll probably start crying. And you’ll no doubt cry through more than one chapter.  It’s basically the story of what happened, how they discovered her cancer, his and his family’s reactions to it, and how it affected the family.

This is a true story and it will make you cry. A book totally outside my normal genre-reading, I found myself completely engaged. A page-turning memoir…I really never would have expected it.  So here it is, by Jim Beaver… Life’s That Way: A Memoir.

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis is famed for the Chronicles of Narnia, which is one of my favorite series, although I'm afraid I might have outgrown them.   Till We Have Faces is a more mature book and a powerful story.

The story is a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth from the perspective of the half-sister who was blamed in the myth as a jealous woman who disliked Psyche and set her up. In this first-person tale, Orual justifies her actions to the gods and explains her side. The result is a fascinating and unique story.

What I enjoy the most about Till We Have Faces is that Orual's character is so very likeable even with her flaws. She is told she is ugly as a child, but she is able to put up a good argument that she truly loves her sister who is beautiful. The beginning of the book is spent on Orual and Psyche's childhood and their teacher, the Fox, and how Psyche came to be sacrificed to Cupid. I don't like to give away endings, so I'll leave it there.

An elegant story with a strong emotional thread, this is a wonderful book.

The Monster at the end of this Book by Jon Stone

I've been remiss in the picture book category and thought it might be time to mention the single best picture book ever written. The Monster at the end of this Book might be for kids, but it's the kind of book that an adult can enjoy reading to the little ones.

It's clever and funny and what I would call a page turner for children.  I suppose if picture books were categorized, this would be a mystery.   I loved it when I was little and I have the feeling in a hundred years, it will still be in print.




 

Phule's Company by Robert Aspirin

Let me first say that I enjoy all of Robert Aspirin's books. He cracks me up. I enjoy the Myth Series and may at some point do a post on that, but even as a Robert Aspirin fan, I stumbled onto Phule's Company several years after it was first released.

 In Phule's Company, a lieutenant is punished with the command of a company of men who have been shuffled off to the most undesirable placement in the legion, Haskin's Planet. The captain and colonel gave the command of the company of "losers and problem cases" to the lieutenant who is the wealthy son of the owner of Phule-Proof Munitions, hoping to entice him to resign. He happily accepts the promotion.

But Phule didn't know he was supposed to fail. And he didn't do things the way everyone expected. With plenty of laughs along the way, Phule finds the special abilities his troops possess and teaches them a new way of looking at things. They learn to work together and when problems come, surprise everyone with their success. A fun and entertaining read. One I can highly recommend.

The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel: A Step-by-Step Guide to Perfecting Your Work by Robert J. Ray

I'm rather picky when it comes to books on writing. I've read magazines, books, and articles and a great many rely on the same cliched advice. And I think, "Yeah, I've seen this before." The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel takes a refreshing step toward practical advice in editing work and provides unique tools in revising a novel. (The author looks at content editing rather than copy editing. His book covers the larger scope.)

The book goes into detail on how to plan subplots, how to organize scenes, building tension, and fixing scenes.  He suggests spreadsheeting to help clarify holes and places to expand.  I've used techniques from this book on multiple occasions even when I was stuck in the writing phase.  There are side bars with tips, checklists, and several examples of the grids he uses.

As books on writing go, this is one of the best.

The Manhattan Hunt Club by John Saul

John Saul knows how to write a chilling book.  The Manhattan Hunt Club opens with a brutal attack on a woman.  The man who tried to help her, Jeff Converse, was falsely accused and is wrongly convicted.  His sentence is light, only nine months. On his way to Riker’s Island, the van Jeff is riding in is hit and someone pulls him out of the van and sends him into the tunnels.

Jeff is then shoved into a cell with a serial killing crazy who doesn’t remember his killings.  Meanwhile his father and girlfriend, neither believing the official story of his death, join forces to try to find him. Taking place in the subterranean world of New York City, the effect is a cold and dark world. Jeff and Jagger, the serial killer, are told that they are going to be in a hunt...as prey. If they can get to the surface, they will live.

The odds are stacked against them. And the hunters are coming.

The Manhattan Hunt Club touches on an interesting array of themes and politics, from the homeless (or houseless) to vigilante justice. But it’s done with such finesse that the themes don’t overshadow the entertainment value the book has to offer. 

The idea might be familiar, but the treatment is unique.  Somewhere between mystery and horror, The Manhattan Hunt Club is a great read!

(Links will take you off site to Amazon...)